Cute girlfriend and a loose tooth

In the last 10 minutes before bed tonight, we discovered two new things about our kindergartner:

#1 He thinks he has a girlfriend
#2 He has his first loose tooth

We were reading a chapter from "Little House on the Prairie", which Baxter loves, by the way. He likes to look at the title of the next chapter before closing the book. Tonight, it was "Fever 'n' Ague". He didn't understand the function of that little 'n' so we explained how it was an abbreviation for "and", and went on to give examples, such as "mac 'n' cheese", "Baxter 'n' Lyle", etc. He suddenly said, "or...Baxter 'n' Laura!" and then giggled and hid his little embarrassed smirk under the blanket. Matt and I looked at each other in amazement, realizing suddenly that he has a crush on Laura Ingalls! So we asked him if he thinks Laura is kind of a "special" girl. Of course he declined to comment, but was laughing. I have always hated when adults joke with kids about their boyfriends or girlfriends, having despised that kind of teasing from my grandparents when I was a kid, so I started to say, "Oh, no, Daddy, 5 year olds don't have girlfriends, just friends who are girls." But oh, no, was I ever wrong! Baxter quickly corrected me, saying, "Yes, they can!" and giggled hysterically. Again, we looked at each other in amazement - "Do you have a girlfriend, Baxter?" "Yes! Lucy!", he exclaimed. Baxter's good friend Lucy (shown with Baxter in the princess picture above) is one of a few girls who has proposed to him, and he did decide recently that she would be his choice as a wife - "Because we always love to play together!" And you know, that's as good a reason as any.

We had just gotten over the shock of this little admission when Matt discovered that one of Baxter's little tiny front baby teeth is loose. Baxter went wild with excitement, running into the bedroom where I was, and throwing his arms around my legs. There were about 100 questions about the Tooth Fairy, most of which we promised to answer tomorrow. He went to bed feeling very big and cool.

It's kind of amazing how, in the span of 15 minutes, you can suddenly see your little kid turning into a big kid.