Happy Birthday Grandma Smith!

A Special Father’s Day wish from Ryan and Wyatt to Grandpa DeToro!

Ryan had always wanted a butterfly to land on his finger, but he never expected what happened next…

Continue reading ‘Butterfly Kisses’

Here is a little clip from the Father’s Club Spring Fling for Ryan and Wyatt’s school.  Notice how competitive my family is!

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Continue reading ‘Spring Fling!’

I’ve created another blog off of this site.  It is Smithism Christianism.  It’s a place for Jan and I, and eventually the boys to blog our thoughts of encouragement and inspiration on Christian topics.  Take a look and enjoy!

Eh Cumpari from Ryan’s 3rd grade Music Expo! Enjoy!

Teeth falling out all over the place!  There have been three visits from the Hairy Tooth Fairy in two weeks!

The Toofless Wonder!

With two young boys, we strive to maintain a certain sense of decorum around the Smith house.  It is usually somewhere between mayhem and good old-fashioned nuttiness.  This morning was no exception.

I was fully engaged in loafing on this President’s day off from work, when I heard Jan’s “fairly annoyed” tone of voice coming from the other room.  Being a particularly rare occurrence, it caught my attention.  I had to decide whether to investigate and haul out my puffy-chested fatherly presence, or to remain snugly nestled in my comfy home-office pursuing my recent fascination with Facebook.  I got in only one or two clicks before Jan’s voice escalated in volume to the “highly agitated” tone.  Before I could even get up, it turned to all out yelling - which is very out of character for Jan.

I resolutely headed for the kitchen - the source of the commotion, but I saw nothing.  I called out to Jan. She responded from the guest room - her little get-away in the house.  When I entered, I was surprised to see she was calmly sitting there reading a magazine munching on her beloved bowl of morning Wheat Chex.

Had I missed something?  While I was relieved that this was not a real crisis, I was perplexed as to what all the yelling was about.  

Jan then began to recount the conversation she had with Ryan just moments earlier, just as she was pouring her bowl of cereal:

Ryan:  Mom?  Do I look like a maggot?

Jan: (taking first spoonful of Wheat Chex) Ryan - I’m eating.  Can we talk about something else?

Ryan: What’s wrong? I only said ‘maggot’.

Jan: I’m trying to eat here.  I don’t want to talk about that.

Ryan:  What about baby maggots?  Aren’t they cuter than older maggots?

Jan: Ryan!  Can you please talk about something else?

Ryan:  Well, what do you call a baby fly?

Jan:  A maggot - ewww - now you got me saying it!

Ryan: What do maggots eat?

Jan: (mouth full of Wheat Chex, crunching) They eat decaying fle… Ryan!  I don’t want to talk about this!

It was about that time that she hurried into the guest room, closing the door tightly behind her.

I went back through the kitchen to the family room, and sure enough, lying motionless on the floor was Ryan, still completely cocooned in a white blanket with only his head sticking out - looking very much like a maggot.  He had this very pleased-with-himself look on his face knowing full well that although not initially intended, he had achieved a full-scale gross-out score with his mom. 

As he squirmed about, I had to admit, only a wet slime-trail would’ve made it any more convincing!

As much as this did not set well with Jan’s breakfast I feel for her.  Just wait until Ryan pupates in a couple of years from now…

So what do you do when you want to extol the virtues of honesty, but also want to let your kids enjoy their childhood?  When Ryan lost his first tooth, we went back and forth and decided to give a spare key to the Tooth Fairy - as long as nothing went missing from the house… 

So, in place of baby teeth went bills, in place of bicuspids went Bakugans.  Until last night that is. 

Ryan is nine now.  And a 9 year old knows a thing or two about technology.   That was my undoing.  I thought I was being oh so clever.  It took me 45 minutes to craft the note you see below.  In the past, I would have hand written something with a similar style of script.  But last night, I thought I would find a font to do the work for me.  Now that is well enough, but I had to go and get fancy.  I wanted to add the fairy-like scrolling around the text. 

The deal went down smoothly enough about an hour after he was asleep.  I got the tooth and placed the note without waking him.  Today was a different story. About an hour or so after Ryan had already been up and was carrying around the cash I had left, he asked me, “Who gave me that note?”  Slyly I answered, “Who do you think gave you that note?”  Ryan replied, “I think you did.”  “Why would you think that?” I countered.  “Because,” he started, mustering up a certain self-assuredness, “there are little dots on the leaf parts of this note!  And Tooth Fairies don’t have printers!  But YOU have a printer!”

BUSTED!

I felt proud and embarrassed all in the same moment.  Of course Ryan rode the crest of this newfound indignation as he recounted each and every embellishment we exercised on behalf of the Tooth Fairy:  The gold glitter that we trailed from the window to his bed, the personalized messages, and, well, the fact that we perpetrated this little hoax didn’t help:

I had Jan hold the video camera pointing at the boys’ bedroom door.  I taped a little penlight to an unwrapped wire hanger, and made it smoothly fly in and out of the camera frame.  In post-production, I added “twinkle” sounds.  In the morning, we told the boys we had left the camera on and this is what was caught on film!  Something about this must have bugged Ryan, because he just had to know how that was done!

In the end, it did not bother him too much.  He still had the cash in hand and the promise of more to come, whether from a tiny flying pixelated fairy, or a lumbering be-stubbled dad with deep pockets.

Now the question was how and when were we going to tell Wyatt. That’s when a little voice filtered through from the other side of the door, “Dad, I know it’s you!”