missing

Miss Mary lost another tooth Sunday afternoon and has only been able to eat ice cream ever since. Because losing teeth is just so incredibly painful you know. 😉

But in the past few days she’s noticed that her words are slurred because of the gap in her mouth. She can’t say ‘toothbrush’ or ‘Christmas’ or ‘tricycle’.

So she crawled in my lap and confessed, “Mommy, I am afraid to lose any more teeth.”

“Why?”

“Because pretty soon I won’t be able to talk at all and I’ll have to learn that finger language.” She moved her hands in a pretty pathetic attempt at sign language.

“I don’t know any finger language! What am I going to do?”

I told her that we couldn’t quiet her down that easily and she yelled in protest when I tried to tell Erik about it on the phone. So don’t let on that I told you about the finger language, OK?

And then, as if losing teeth isn’t enough, this kid had the audacity to go on a four-day trip with his friends.

We always joke that Ben is never here; he’s always working at the car wash or hanging out with his crowd. But his complete absence put our household into mourning. We asked each other several times a day, “Where’s Ben?” “When’s he coming home?” “Who’s going to eat all this food?” (because although Stefan is bigger, Ben can eat him under the table).

And today he’s home and downloading new music onto my iPod and fingering through his stack of college brochures and talking photography with me and playing his viola in the family room so that it echoes through the house and cruelly reminding me that he’ll turn 18 this winter.

I’m rethinking the idea of him going away next fall– college is overrated isn’t it? Really, what’s the point of all that eddjookashun?

p.s. I wrote a last-minute post featuring Ben at Segullah last week. You can skip my boring writing but Ben’s response in the comments is priceless.