I am pretty sure it can be considered official: Wesley is a baby genius. You might wonder what makes this official and the answer should be obvious: I have declared it. But honestly, you can have conversations with the kid. I woke him up the other day and asked him for a hug and he told me "no, breakfast." (Typical male behavior, food before affection). But, knowing that it may eventually yield me the coveted hug, I said "Ok, Wes, what do you want for breakfast?" to which he replied "pop-tart.". I know what you are all thinking - genius, right? I mean c'mon - the kid is 22 months old and asking for empty carbs? Soon he will be composing poetry and learning to play the guitar all while calculating actuarial tables. I love all my kids equally, but I also compare them to one another and when you look at the fact that Ben didn't say a word until he was 2 1/2 and still answers the question "What are you doing?" with "Good" - you have to admit that Wes's conversational skills are amazing.
In other (non-genius) news, Maddie turned five last week. She had a great birthday, got to be star of the week at school, basically basked in the attention. Then, Monday, we were going to gymnastics and she said (out of the blue). "Mom, I just thought my life would change when I turned five." I laughed, then asked her "Why do you say that?" and she said "Well, did your life change when you were five?" and I told her not that I remembered - what was she hoping for? She said "I don't know, I just thought that maybe I wouldn't like to play with dolls anymore, and I still do. That is weird, huh?" My kids never cease to crack me up.
Zach has been going through a pretty clingy mommy stage. Not sure what is prompting that, because I obviously give the kid whatever he wants and lavish him with attention whenever I can telling him how handsome, intelligent, witty and super-awesome he is...that's not wrong, right? Lately when I leave him he has taken to wailing "Mommy, don't leave me...I just like you...I just want to spend all day with you...". Oh sweetie, mom loves you to, but not enough to spend all day, every day with you.
I better do a quick Ben update as well, so that he doesn't feel left out. SPOILER ALERT...do not read this to your kids if they still believe in the Tooth Fairy....so, Ben lost a tooth a couple of weeks ago and it happened at school with me not having to do anything about it (for those of you knowing my aversion to teeth, you know what a blessing this is). So, he was so excited to leave it for the tooth fairy. Well, that night Wesley had croup and Matt and I took turns sleeping on the floor by him, then I got up bright and early to leave for a trip...at about 9 am it hit me - We forgot to be the tooth fairy! Bad, bad parents. So, I told Matt to leave a note the next night from the Tooth Fairy telling Ben that since it was his first tooth, the Fairy wanted to give him some more time to show it off to everyone...and to leave him $2. That should buy him off. Good, good parents. Then, a few days later, Ben was telling me that his other bottom tooth was wiggly. I asked him the next day how it was and he said, "Hmmm, not that wiggly anymore." I asked him if I could see and it turns out the tooth was gone - he had swallowed it at some point. I'm glad the Tooth Fairy of our household does not require actual, physical evidence of tooth loss, because there was no way I was going in after that...
