Fodder for My Kids' Future Psychiatrists

Last time I posted under this heading, I told stories about my two boys and promised stories about my girls in the future. Here are a couple:

Gabby has been losing teeth lately, which I hear is normal for a girl of 5-6 years, but I like to tease her that she has lost teeth from kissing too many boys. One of the first times I teased her about it last fall, she told me she had only kissed one. Not even a month into kindergarten she had a boyfried. I am really looking forward to her teenage years...

We had a nice conversation with her about not really kissing the boys at school, and it seemed to have worked. Then, within the past week or two, I found out that she had been kissed at school again. Only, this time, she had given something nice to a little girl who had learning disabilities. The girl showed her appreciation by trying to kiss Gabby on the mouth. Yep, sure enough, Gabby lost another tooth.

It's hard to think of good, embarrassing stories to tell on Naomi because she's really a good kid. But, we had plenty of drama on our Disneyland trip -- see my posting to read about all of the vomiting fun -- the worst of the hurls were Naomi's. I mentioned in that posting about not being able to tease a 10 year old girl into riding the Tower of Terror after she decided it was too scary. That happened on our first night in the park. A really hard rain had soaked us all in the late afternoon, so we had returned to the hotel for dinner. Our little kids, my mother and Rochelle wanted to call it a day, but the older kids wanted to go back to the park for some adventure. I was certainly game.

We talked about doing all of the most thrilling rides: California Screamin', Space Mountain, The Tower of Terror, etc. Both Naomi and Benjamin were psyched for a thrill-seeking evening. We started with the Tower of Terror. It was easily the most exciting ride we had taken (Benjamin didn't even open his eyes -- didn't know there were windows at the top). Naomi was about 10 shades whiter in the face as we walked away. I asked if she wanted to go on the roller coaster (California Screamin'). No way. How about Space Mountain? No. After asking if she wanted to go on several other rides (each getting tamer than the one before), she finally agreed to "Talk to Crush." If you haven't been to that one, I'll explain the level of adventure. You sit in a small theater and Crush the Turtle from Finding Nemo swims onto the big screen and interacts with the audience. As you enter, the attendant invites the children to sit on two lilly pads (green splotches on the carpet near the screen) so they can see better. Benjamin went up, but Naomi sat clutching my arm until at least halfway through the show. Good thing Crush was there to lift her spirits; she had refused the Carousel before agreeing to Crush.