See Ya

Time for a little blog break. Things to do, you know how it is.
Bye for now,
GBS
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A Little Boy's Fall For Grace

My daughter has lost 8 teeth so far, and until today my son had lost just the bottom two. They've both written letters to their Tooth Fairies and discovered that hers is called Gretel and his is called Grace.

Just before we left America on Sunday, one of my son's top teeth moved into a new phase of wobbliness. By this morning, after some frantic jiggling, he was able to poke it out of his mouth like Nanny McPhee.

This afternoon he cried out, in a panic, that his wobbly tooth really hurt. As I walked towards him, I saw him give it a big tug, his head went slowly down onto the table and then he fell backwards to the floor. The tooth was out and he had fainted.

He awoke almost immediately and started crying so I picked him up and took him upstairs to lie down on my bed. He was white as milk with no colour in his lips, and his eyes were scarily sleepy. He had a headache and pins and needles in his shoulders. I reassured him but needed reassurance myself, so I called my parents. Then I called the doctor, who said as long as he hadn't banged his head on the way down I should keep him home and let him rest. The poor little boy felt awful.

After a while his cheeks were pinker and he looked less worried so I took him downstairs for a drink, some cookies and Bedknobs and Broomsticks on DVD. He got back to his normal bouncy self as the evening progressed. As he put that troublesome tooth in an envelope for Grace, he thought for a moment and said: "if I write and tell her this tooth made me faint, do you think she'll give me more money?"

Bobbing About

... it did end (boo). We had our 3 long snoozy days on Sanibel Island. We found a couple of southern family restaurants that serve corn breads before appetizers and cook jumbo shrimp in a dozen different ways. It was great to see everyone relaxing, getting brown and sleeping late.

Yesterday we stayed inside between lunchtime and 4pm, and even then the sun was still scorching. We all wandered down to the beach and I made the little one keep his white t-shirt on over his slightly pink little shoulders. I was convinced the sea water was washing off all the diligently applied sun cream, so I kept slapping more on to the kids' hot sandy skin as they wriggled to get back to digging holes. I tried not to fuss.

My daughter climbed on top of an inflatable alligator so I pulled her out to beyond where the small waves were breaking and we bobbed about together. The water was hot, shallow and cloudy. My toes were sinking into the soggy sand, sometimes touching shells or seaweed. I looked around at all that water and tried to banish the word 'shark' from my mind ... but it kept swimming back ...