Future Ranger?

Jack runs to greet his daddy at the door every day when he arrives home from work.  They spend quite a bit of time passing Joe’s ranger hat back and forth, then the hat tends to go onto Jack’s talking bear (you can see it on the shelf in the background – what you can’t see is that Jack broke the poor bear’s neck). 

A few days ago Joe and Jack took a walk and Joe caught their conversation on video.  They spoke of foliose lichen and crustose lichen on the trees.  I can’t tell you how bizarre it is for me to watch the little boy who came from my body identify different types of lichen.  It gets even weirder when Jack makes me draw lichen on the magnadoodle because the highest grade I ever got in Science was a C, and that was with “help.”

Brusha brusha brusha

After weeks of dealing with nightly struggles over toothbrushing and feeling like even when we were able to brush Jack’s teeth, it wasn’t a thorough cleaning, I decided something had to be done.  I got the bright idea to try one of those toothbrushes with the spinning brush head, so off I went to the store where I found an orange crayon toothbrush.  (It didn’t even occur to me until last night how perfect the design is for Jack – I just chose it because it was the only one without a weird action-figure handle!)  It’s battery-operated and not rechargable, but the price was pretty good for something I wasn’t sure would do the trick.

Jack wasn’t sure about it at first.  Put this vibrating thing in my mouth?  Whaaa?  No way, mom.  I ended up brushing his teeth with the spinning turned off.  The next day, though, Joe and Jack had some sort of breakthrough and Jack was suddenly in love with the spinning toothbrush.  Now he requests to brush his teeth several times a day.  The brushing goes on for a good five minutes, too.  We have to put an end to it, otherwise he will keep going.

Last night, after a good long tooth-cleaning (during which I noticed that he lingered in the place where his molar is erupting), I suddenly heard the buzzing get louder.  Wondering what Jack was up to, I wandered into the bathroom to see that he was using his toothbrush to clean his fingernails!  Well, he’s got the right idea, I guess…