The Tooth Fairy's First Visit

We're back for another update on our (not for much longer) five year old!

One morning, the kids were lounging in our bed with us as we tried to grasp at a few wisps of sleep. It's rare that the four of us make it very long, but on this particular morning, I think we were all still in a calm, waking up sort of mode and just chatting about nothing. That is, until Lauren became interested in Ryan's eyes, or as Ryan put it, "Lauren made a one and then poked me in the eye!" He seemed to be far more impressed that she could make the number one with her finger than he was distressed that he had been poked in the eye. Talk about being able to do no wrong...

Best Buds

In that vein, Ryan has now on multiple occasions decided that "I want another little sister, but not a little brother". We explained to him that if, in fact, he were to have another sibling that we would just have to be happy with a boy or a girl since that decision gets made for us. He decided that he would pray really hard to God and then maybe he could get what he wanted - who knows, maybe he'd be right! (To be clear, we have no announcement to make.)

While we don't remember a lot about choosing our elementary school friends, it seems Ryan decided to take after his mother and discriminate based on hair.  While Cheryl decided on the first day of first grade that she could not be friends with somebody with red hair (they later became pretty inseparable), Ryan chose his best kindergarten friend "because he has nice hair." Who would have thought that one's hair could make or break you like that?

This conversation had us laughing:
Ryan: Mommy, the ant* in my room this morning was really big!
Mommy: Did you kill it?
Ryan: No, I tried, but I couldn't, so I just put it in the trash.
Mommy: Uhhh...you know it probably crawled right out of the trash, right?
Ryan: (stunned) Oh.
*the "ant" in his room could have been any insect or spider as Ryan doesn't tend to differentiate between bugs at this point in his life
We suppose it's good that he's learned that things that go in the trash don't generally come back out.

This was a good round for all of us!

Ryan has been keeping busy this summer with all kinds of fun.  We got an AMF summer bowling pass, of which we have made tremendous use. He visited the spy museum and spent a week at bible school, soccer camp, dinosaur camp and skating camp. Grandma and Grandpa hosted his cousin and him for a week of "camp" and took him on his first cruise! This is a summer he is not likely to forget as he has loved every minute of it.

He is already so comfortable on his skates.

One of his biggest growth milestones of the last few months, however, is that Ryan lost his first tooth! He was "wiggling it in my bed and it just came out!" He was pretty proud and was able to show all his friends the new space in his mouth before school let out *phew*. He was also thrilled that the tooth fairy left him a half dollar "do you know that they don't even make those anymore?!?"

Can you believe this little man is going to be six soon? *sniff*