My darling boy, aged almost exactly five and one half years lost his very first tooth this morning while brushing his pearly whites. This wee little tooth, in the middle on the bottom left has been loose for a little over a week or so. I believe it was the first one that grew into his tiny head as a baby, so it’s apt that it’s the first one out.
It became news to us right around the time he rode his bike without the training wheels last week – July 21. As I let go of his wobbling seat for the first time, and the boy took off, as straight as an arrow, my eyes started to smart with tears. There went my baby, on his big boy bike, all by himself AND with a loose tooth… good lord. I know I don’t need to spell out the proud/scary symbolism of such a moment. I have the pictures in my mind to remember it, but the feeling is one that will surely linger for the rest of the summer. These are just the first new steps of many in a new phase we’ll be taking now. He starts kindergarden this fall. There’s no going back.
I’m quite afraid this child, who is still practicing starting and stopping correctly on his bike, will accidentally take out a bunch of old people minding their own business, and we’ll have as many as three or four casualties on the sidewalk at 11:30 in the morning.
I’m so completely thrilled by the changes in this child! He was a chubby baby not too long ago. I think I only really realised how much bigger he had become when he came to visit me in hospital after the birth of his sister. After looking down at the tiny-girl-bundle in my arms, and then back to my boy, he had aged in a blink of an eye to me. It’s crazy how that happens.
Gone are all traces of his former baby-fattened self. Instead I have a lean, sculpted little dude… he’s a very cool kid. All sinew and muscle, with LOTS of tightly curled black-brown hair, and a wide disarming smile… and now with a missing tooth. He’s still ridiculously handsome though. And despite all the aggro he gives me sometimes, he is truly a very good boy. Soft-spoken, sweet and considerate. Just like daddy. (His sister, The Devil, is just like me, it would appear.)
He is completely annoyed by the fact that I insist he ride his bike with the training wheels attached to and from camp each day, and will give me a full-scale dressing-down at every opportunity. He can ride with them off at home on our street, but the camp is roughly ten city blocks from the house, and there’s lots of traffic on the busy main, and many traffic lights to stop at. Not to mention many elderly persons out taking strolls, sometimes with canes in hand (sometimes with elderly-companion caretakers on one arm) and I’m quite afraid this child, who is still practicing starting and stopping correctly on his bike, will accidentally take out a bunch of old people minding their own business, and we’ll have as many as three or four casualties on the sidewalk at 11:30 in the morning.
I worry he won’t stop well at the traffic lights and go careening into the road and get flattened by a flatbed truck. He still falls off a lot, because his feet don’t quite reach the ground. It’s premature to let him ride without them for such a distance just yet. Did I mention the fact that I’m in a near full-on sprint at least half a block behind him, pushing Ava Scarlett in the stroller? It’s all just too much. He’s not ready. I’m not ready.
He’s growing fast though. By September he’ll be a wee bit taller, and riding his bike like a champ, I’m so sure. And just like that, there goes my baby…
Now if we would just get a JOB already and help clean up this mess of a house, then I’d really have something to celebrate.
G.G.
