7 June 2010

Today Mr. Brown went to the dentist to get his crown snapped into place, and he asked our nice dentist to look at Nut Brown's teeth. Nut Brown has a sizeable overbite, and we were beginning to suspect it has developed because of his habit of chewing/sucking on his boppy. The dentist confirmed our suspicions, and added that if we could get him to stop, Nut Brown might get by with a minor orthodontic intervention at age 8-10 instead of full out braces.

So we did the unthinkable . . . .

. . . we took away Nut Brown's boppy.

I cried myself to sleep. It felt like we'd killed someone. When I realized after the dentist visit that Mr. Brown was set on it, I started praying and praying that Nut Brown would let it go easily. I asked Mr. Brown to do the putting in bed part of our bedtime routine because I couldn't face telling Nut Brown that we weren't going to give him his boppy for bed tonight. COULD. NOT. FACE. IT. God hears my prayers - Nut Brown went to bed without fussing about it too much, just asking wistfully about it. But there were no tears or tantrums. I told Mr. Brown that he'd better hide it from me, too, and he did.

It took him longer than usual to go to sleep, and he got up several times before he went to sleep, which is unusual. Also he got up in the night crying, because he couldn't find it, but with some cuddles and a drink of water went back to bed easily.

Mr. Brown and I felt like we'd taken away his best friend. Mr. Brown checked in on them before we went to bed and when he found me crying about it he told me that I should go look at Nut Brown and see how he was sleeping just fine. So I did, but I ended up crying again. I was not ready for Nut Brown to give up his boppy, not ready for this at all. At all. I want to write down here how he folded the satin border a certain way to make a point to go in his mouth, how he threaded another section through his fingers as he chewed. How he asked to bring it with him everywhere. How Gia exclaimed that she didn't realize that she'd was making a chew toy when she made it for him. How he greeted it ecstatically when it was brought out at bedtime, and how he sighed with happiness when he'd settle down for a cuddle and a chew. How he'd ask lately for "one more chew" when we were going to put it away for the day. Oh boppy! Oh my baby boy! Is it silly to grieve over something like this? Nut Brown misses his boppy, but I think I am more upset about what the loss of the boppy represents in terms of growing up.

Ode to My Boppy, by Nut Brown

I didn't know about the frog, or that my Gia made it. I only knew the satin edge, and that I like to chew it. My sister says it's stinky, my father says it's rank. My mother would like to wash it, But I say to her, No thanks! ...to be continued

milky way

Driving back from Oklahoma, the sun went down around 6 pm, when we were somewhere in Kansas, planning on stopping in another half hour or so to find a hotel. It felt like the middle of the night- it was really, really dark outside, because I-35 in Kansas is pretty unpopulated. Mr. Brown agreed to stop on an unlit exit ramp so we could get out and look at the stars. It was beautiful- you could see so many, and you could even see the Milky Way stretching across the sky. When Rose Pink got out of the car, she said that she wanted to be an astronaut so that she could bring me back a star. We showed Rose Pink and Nut Brown the fuzzy white band of our galaxy, and explained about stars being bigger than the earth but so far away that they looked really small. It was so awesome to see how beautiful the sky was away from city lights.

Nut Brown started to wander away and I grabbed him. He struggled to get away and then stopped and started to asking something- "------ go?" After he repeated himself several times, we realized he was asking, "Where hotel go?" We'd been talking about how the next stop would be the hotel, and he was stumped by the dark space around us when we got out of the car.

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Since we got home, Mr. Brown has been taking Nut Brown's boppy away from him after he wakes up, and only returning it for naptime and bedtime. It's helped Nut Brown be a lot more active- before he would just lay around and chew on it instead of playing. The first day Mr. Brown decided to sneak it away from him and tell him that it had gone somewhere interesting. When Nut Brown asked for it, Mr. Brown said, "It's gone on a trip! Where did it go?" He and Nut Brown discussed various places it might have gone- "Did it go to the zoo? Did it go to the library?" Nut Brown negatived each of them and finally suggested, "Milk Way!" Apparently the boppy had departed for a day among the stars.

Last night, getting ready for bed, he asked, "Milk Way? Milk Way?" to find out if his boppy had come back yet. I had him run up and look on his bed (sometimes it reappears there at bedtime), and Mr. Brown snagged it and had it "knock" on the front door while Nut Brown was upstairs. Nut Brown of course immediately came to the head of the stairs when he heard the knocking, and heard Mr. Brown say, "Oh, welcome back, boppy! Just in time!" Nut Brown ecstatically received his boppy and went back upstairs chanting, "Just time. Just time." I love the games we play.