Idiotic-parenting syndrome

Luke has this snaggly, straggly top front tooth that isn't coming out.  Once again, he refuses to wiggle it.  The tooth's partner got so lose it was sticking straight out between Luke's lips, and I still had to force him to let me pull it.

Since Luke turned the incident of me pulling out a very loose tooth into something more traumatic than you'd see in the average horror movie, I've been trying to convince him to wiggle it himself in the hopes he'd get used to wiggling it and maybe pull it.  But, he hasn't been.  And, now it's not even loose anymore.  He wants every tooth pulled by our dentist, and he's not budging.

It's become a battle, and I should know better than to make things a battle.  But, my best plan was foiled by our dentist.  A while back I told Luke that if he chose to have it pulled by the dentist, that was fine, he could pay the dentist to pull it out of his allowance.  Unfortunately, the dentist is too kind ,and when Luke told him what I said, he told Luke he'd pull them no charge.

But, I think it's ridiculous to make an appointment to get every tooth pulled out.  I mean, what kind of high-maintenance family does such a thing?

So, I had a bout of idiotic-parenting syndrome.

I asked, failing to appear as casual as I intended, "Hey buddy, how's that tooth coming along?  Are you wiggling it?"

Obviously, being overly concerned with his tooth makes it my problem instead of his.

"No," my son countered, "Have you made an appointment for Dr. Fischer?"

Yikes.  And that's when I lost all sense of perspective and good parenting.  "I'll give you twenty dollars if you get that tooth out before Thursday," I blurted out.

Luke looked at me, still unfazed, and replied, "Okay, can you get a dentist appointment for Wednesday?"

Oh, Anna!

Anna has always had a way of getting to me, whether making me laugh, leaving me utterly confounded, or sometimes melting my heart.

Lately she's been melting my heart and leaving me teary eyed with pride.

Anna won Spirit of Stormonth.  It's an award given to two kids who demonstrated all the values of Stormonth (kindness, responsibility, and respect) for their six years at Stormonth.

They had each of Anna's teachers from K4-4th grade come up and talk about her.  It was beautiful.  I sobbed.