Toothless Jonah

Jonah lost his first tooth a few weeks ago. True to Jonah form, he named it Mr. Toothy.

You see, everything in the house, nay, everything in the universe to which Jonah feels some attachment has a name, and that name is usually "Something-y." Chairy, Lampy, Beddy, the immortal Bikey. Some exceptions exist, such as Dragadote, a little stuffed dragon (stuffed as in plush, not as in taxidermy; wouldn't that be cool?). Another interestingly named item is Clip, Jonah's blanket (or night-night). The blanket has been named Clip for about 3 years now, and we have no idea where the name came from, or what it's supposed to signify.

It's like naming a cat Sparkles. Let this serve as a warning to all you folks who think letting kids name stuff is a good idea. It's not. Whenever I hear of parents letting their older children help name the new baby, I get nervous. "Thank you for seeing me Mr. President. I'd like to talk with you about this new environmental regulation . . . Yes sir. My name is Clip Sparkles McDonald's Jameson. Yes sir, that's my real name. Well, my parents let my older brothers name me. Please sir, if we could get back to the agenda . . . Yes sir, it is a ridiculous name. Is that . . . okay. Have a nice day sir."

Back to Mr. Toothy. The method of his (arrival? departure? independence? release?) removal was unique in 4boydom. There was no crying, no wincing, no running away from well-meaning parents. Neither Timothy nor Stephen would let us near their mouths after the first 2 weeks of a tooth beginning to wiggle. Jonah would walk around and order us, "Feel my tooth! Cool huh?"

Then he pulled it out. He held it up and grinned bloodily, like a barbarian who'd just pulled a trophy bone out of a still-breathing animal.

He ran around the house, making sure that everyone (including himself in a mirror) saw both the tooth and the raw hole in his mouth where Mr. Toothy used to dwell. Pure Jonah.

Also, true to form, when the time came to put it under the pillow for the Tooth Fairy, he couldn't let it go. "I don't want her to take Mr. Toothy. Will you make sure she doesn't take him?"

We agreed that we would pass along the information.

Mr. Toothy stayed with us for a few days, still hanging out with his pal Jonah, like a newly minted sailor, home on leave before shipping out. There were the usual scares of "Where's Mr. Toothy?" We'd ask, "Where did you leave it?" and Jonah would say "Oh," and then run upstairs to the bookshelf where Mr. Toothy slept.

Finally, however Jonah's love for Bionicles overcame his love for human dental detritus. He needed money for the new Toa, and the First Tooth payout of $1 was just too large to resist (it's 50 cents for each tooth after the first one).

Under the pillow it went, and true to 4boydad and 4boymom form, we forgot all about it. "Mr. Toothy's still here! Where's my dollar?" Oops. "Make your bed, Jonah, and see if the Tooth Fairy stops by later today.

She did.

At least all the lemonade is gone

Yesterday we had 34 people over at the house, with adults (defined in the usual way) barely outnumbering children, 18 to 16. That's a lot of kids, especially considering that our son Timothy, at 9, was the oldest kid in the house. As Jonah (6) said at one point, "It's raining babies!"

The event was, ostensibly, Sams' fourth birthday party. But you invite some family, and then some others, and then a friend or two, and before you know it you've got kids everywhere, lovingly disassembling your DVD collection, changing the incoming voice message on your phone, leaving cans of Sprite and lemonade with only one sip taken from them on every horizontal surface . . .

In a word, utter chaos.

And I loved it. Thanks to all who came.

Here's the recipe for the fish rub, for those who asked. It's from this month's Blueprint magazine:

• 2 lbs fish fillet. - I used tilapia, but any whitefish will do. The original recipe recommended striped bass or red snapper (very tasty!)
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 Tbsp dried oregano - I didn't have any dried stuff, so I used about 2 Tbsp of fresh stuff from our "herb garden" (actually a galvanized tub on our front porch
  
• 1 Tbsp chili powder
• 2 tsp coarse salt - Shhh. Don't tell, but I used regular salt and nobody died.
• 4 Tbsp (1/4 cup) extra-virgin olive oil - Um. I used whatever Olive Oil my wife brought home from the store last time. Again, nobody died.
  
• 1/4 cup finely chopped cilantro - I used less, but I hate too much cilantro

Mix the spices, add the cilantro and olive oil to make a paste, then rub onto both sides of the fish. I didn't rub it in with my hands (fish hands! oh no!) and used a brush instead. If you're grilling the fish, leave the skin on one side. We baked it and used skinless fillets.

Refrigerate for 30 mintues to 2 hours. I didn't time ours yesterday, but we left the fish in the fridge while I put the rub on the chicken, sliced a cabbage, hollered at my kids, started the chimney starter on the grill, drank a Coke, diced 2 or 3 tomatoes, and yelled "Hello!" out the front door as the first guests arrived. Let's call it an hour and a half.

To cook the fish, you can grill it (5 minutes per side) or broil it in the oven. We broiled it, and I have no idea for how long. When I can smell what's in the oven, I check it. I keep checking it until it's done, then I take it out. Sorry, not to be able to help much there.

Let the fish cool, and then flake it off for tacos. I had a good-sized third of a fillet yesterday on its own and it was excellent. Enjoy.

Fear

We were reading Treasure Island last night when the cat meowed.

Sparkles is not a chatty cat.  He doesn't walk into the room like a Vegas entertainer and start greeting everyone, "Hey Rocco!  Good to see ya. Valerie! How's the family?" etc.

Appropriately (for a cat) he usually confines his vocalizations to serious situations.  "Hey! That's my leg!"  Or, "Dog!  There's a dog coming and I'm stuck outside!"  Also, "Other cat!  There's another cat out here and I need to be let in now!"  And let's not forget, "OPEN THIS DOOR RIGHT NOW OR I'M GONNA POOP ON THE CARPET!"

That kind of thing.

Last night, his meowing meant, "Some kid shut me up in the bathroom."  Now, this happens occasionally.  I've accidentally shut the cat in our closet before.  He's gotten stuck in the coat closet a couple of times on accident.  The key word here is accident.  But not last night.

I looked up from the book.  "Is the cat in the bathroom?"  Over on the couch, three of the boys gave blank stares.  But one looked sheepish.

Stephen (7) answered, "Yes."

"Did you shut Sparkles into the bathroom?"

Eyes downcast, "Yes."

"Let him out."

"But he'll scratch me or bite me."  Then he started to cry.

Well, crap.  First, it was bees.  Stephen hasn't been outside in weeks (except for the pool) because he's afraid of bees.  Actually, according to him, it's "bees and wasps and mosquitos."  

And now he's afraid to be inside with the cat.

"The cat won't attack you," I said, trying to calm Stephen down.

Jonah (6) piped in, "Yes he will.  He attacked me yesterday and scratched my leg."  Blue eyes sparkling, he grinned. Thanks Jonah.

I turned my attention back to Stephen. "Would you like it if I shut you in the bathroom?"  He shook his head.  "And neither does Sparkles.  Please go let him out."

As Stephen left, crying, Timothy (9) looked a little guilty.

So I said out loud to no-one in particular, "You know, the only reason the cat attacks you guys is when there's no food in his bowl."  Pause for guilt.  "Timothy, did you feed the cat today?"

"I can't remember."  Great.  A Clinton.

"Timothy.  Go feed the cat so he won't attack your brothers."

As he got up, grumbling, I heard the bathroom door open and then Stephen ran back into the living room and jumped onto the couch with me.  He was still crying, so I held him a little while.  Timothy returned, and we finished the chapter, said prayers, and they went off to bed.

After the boys were asleep, I let the cat out.  In the Summer, he prefers to spend the night outside rather than in my office.

On my way upstairs, I looked into Stephen and Sam's room.  Sam (4) was asleep, but Stephen was looking up at me.  "Where's Sparkles?"

"Outside."

"For all night?"

"Yes.  Good night."

"Good night Dad."

He closed his eyes and was asleep before I could even turn the light on in my room.

Update:

This morning, I waited 5 minutes to water my plants.  You see, there was a bee in the flowery bushy thing between me and the water valve, and turning on the water would have meant leaning over an area of high bee probability.

What's worse: it was a male carpenter bee, and they don't sting.  Still, I waited.  But I didn't cry.  Much.

What The Heart Wants

It's summertime here at 4boyhouse, and that can only mean one thing: forced reading.  Yes, our particular Bridge on the River Kwai is being built from books off of the school reading lists of not one, not two, but three boys.  And I thought paying for school was rough.

At least Stephen (7 and a rising 2nd grader) and Jonah (6 and a rising 1st grader) have the same list.  It's huge at 3 pages long and has some nice features.  For example, we can apparently count towards the reading list any of the books on the list that we've read within the past year.  We're halfway home right there.  Also, having gone through this list twice with Timothy (9) and once before with Stephen, we already have lots of these books and already know which ones are winners and which ones are snoozers.  (That was not an intentional pun, but I'll leave it there, just to bother you, gentle reader).

So there's no doubt about the 1st & 2nd grade reading lists getting done.

The 4th grade list, for Timothy, is a different matter.  First off, Timothy and fiction are not the best of friends.  He likes "fact" books, especially ones about animals.  Encyclopedias, Eyewitness-type books, even the gross-out books from the book fair all thrive in stacks in every room in our house, lest the boy be unable to quench his thirst for animal facts at a moment's notice.

He's been this way for years, much to the consternation of his mother and me.  He's an avid and voracious reader, but fiction did not fly, in spite of  our best efforts.  The Hobbit?  Yawn.  Narnia?  Nope.

Then along came Harry Potter.  At 7 (a year earlier than I had planned), we read our oldest boy the first Harry Potter book: The Sorcerer's Stone (apologies to overseas readers and book snobs).  Timothy loved it.  He enjoyed it so much that we went ahead and read him the second book in the series a year early.  He had to wait until he was 8 to read the third and fourth book, and until he was 9 to read the rest (which he read on his own; I cried just a little).  He and my wife are waiting rather impatiently for this month's release of the seventh and final book.

But he's semi-hooked now.  I read The Hobbit at bedtime this Spring, and he listened.  We're reading Treasure Island at bedtime, and he's enjoying it.  He read The Magician's Nephew without telling us.

But he still prefers, when reading on his own and on a day -to-day basis, to read animal books, which remain scattered throughout the house.  And the absence from his Summer reading list of books about the grossest eating habits of African lizards has put the fate of that list in doubt.

It's a short list of longer books, and he has to read 4 of them.  He can pick any 3 to fill out the list, but there was one mandatory book.  That one book took weeks, and only got finished because of a couple of back-to-back car trips in which we took away his GameBoy.  Read two chapters, play until the next stop.  Read two more, play until the next stop, etc.

It didn't help that the mandatory book is one of my wife's favorites, so her patience and understanding were a little tested.  But he finished it.  The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe took a little less time and a little less prodding, and Timothy finished it with a smile on his face.

Now he's reading Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH.  And he can't put it down.  He sits on the couch in the living room, reading intently.   "The movie is good, but the book is better," I heard him tell his brother when asked why he didn't just watch the movie instead.  

So that's three books down and one to go.  It may be an uphill battle again, though, since most of the rest of the books on the list are "girl books," as Timothy so gently put it after reading the descriptions.

But he's reading, and reading fiction, and that's a good thing.  Now I just have to convince his mother to let us read Lord of the Rings.