Gavin Michael Curt

Gavin is doing well and actually acting totally fine with his teeth. Every now and then he gets reminded...like two days ago when he took too big a bite of a graham cracker and cried, breaking my heart. Or the other day when we were eating at Johnny Rocket's and he slipped under the table bumping his teeth on the way down, ending our lunch early as he couldn't stop screaming and crying. Poor baby. Which reminds me, whenever we go out to eat he refuses to sit in a high chair or booster seat. But he's a little too small to sit at the table so he eats while standing up on the seat. It's a battle I choose not to pick because it allows us--and everyone around us--to have somewhat of a quiet dining experience. But it just occurred to me that soon he's going to have to learn to stay seated because suddenly now Tyler thinks it's okay to eat standing on the booth as well. Gavin can get away with it because even when standing, his head is no higher than anyone else's but when Tyler stands up, he towers over everyone. Double standards.

I never get tired of people commenting on what a sweet smile Gavin has. It's true. He knows it, too. The more you comment on it, the more he flashes it. Well, Thursday night his smile changed. He tripped over a big helicopter and took the full force of the fall on two of his teeth. The front tooth was turned sideways. The tooth on the side next to it was pushed back a bit. Blood was everywhere. Luckily the Phillips were there so Val walked me through what needed to be done. Step 1)stop the bleeding. Step 2)call his doctor. What's his doctor's name? It's not coming to me. Look in yellow pages. Luckily Val knew what section to look under and suddenly his name jumped out at me. Poor baby was so distraught as he kept sticking his fingers in his mouth playing with his wiggly teeth. Don't touch it we'd say. That's like telling someone not to look at the accident they drive by.

Shawn asked our neighbor to come take a look at it while I waited for Gavin's doctor to call me back, she's a pediatrician. She said it would turn brown or gray. But there's nothing they can do so don't go to ER. His doctor recommended seeing the dentist the next day. He woke up and we noticed he had turned the sideways tooth back into place. We fed him applesauce, smoothies and anything else I could think of that was soft. We were there at 8:30 a.m. His first visit to the dentist. Not quite as picture perfect as Tyler's first visit to the dentist. She said best case scenario is he'll have a brown or gray tooth. Really? Best case? This is totally payback for all the times I've ever seen other kids with a brown or gray tooth and thought "Someone needs to teach that kid to brush." Now I know.

Gavin loves to talk on the phone. He pretends. He chit chats. But when you hand him the phone he's begging to talk on and there's a live person on the other end, the poor boy freezes up and can't say much of anything. So he pushes buttons. He spent this weekend with Gramma and whenever I talked to him, he just pushed the buttons at me. That's how we communicated. Pretty funny.

Little man is growing up. He's very, very, very into potty. Every night he tells me he needs to go potty. He sits backwards on the same Sesame themed seat Tyler used to use, and he pushes and pushes until a little trickle comes out. He looks up so proudly at his audience and flushes while we cheer with well-intentioned enthusiasm. Sometimes he pushes so hard even poopy comes out. Then we cheer even more. Yay Gavin. Now we just need him to start talking clearly and confidently so he can actually tell us when he needs to go. It's not easy to get a word heard in our place these days with jabber-jawed Tyler asking so many questions every waking minute.

Little Gavin has been talking so much. Not all of it makes sense. Like when I picked him up from school yesterday and he said to me "Freckfulls" and I said oh, really? To which he pointed and nothing I could recognize and repeated "Freckfulls." But at dinner last night he said the longest sentence 99.9% of which was completely comprehensible. After slurping up every last drop of fruit out of his bowl and picking it up to his mouth to drink the juice, he said to me "I want more toot salad please Mama. I want more toot salad please Mama."