How much is the tooth fairy giving?

Natalie lost her tooth today! It has been wobbly for a couple of weeks but I didn't expect it to fall out so soon. Neither did she; she lost it sometime at school and didn't even realize it. They searched the classroom but could not find it. She was very concerned that she had nothing for the tooth fairy's first visit. So I suggested that instead of a tooth, she leave a note:


She is convinced that the tooth fairy gives a toy for each tooth; we have been trying to convince her that a dollar would be generous. After all, Graham got a sixpence (worth almost a nickel at today's exchange rates) for every tooth and I got a two-peso coin (worth about 4 US cents). After punching some numbers into MeasuringWorth.com, I found out that Graham's sixpence in 1964 (which I assume was around the time he lost his first tooth) would be roughly the equivalent of $1 today. My 4 cents in 1978, however, would be at most 22 cents today. So if anyone should complain to the tooth fairy, it ought to be me.

Virtual Cocktail Party: Five things about me

Over a month ago, Glennia, author of The Silent I and my fellow contributor over at the Silicon Valley Moms Blog, tagged me for this virtual cocktail party, "Five things about me". It has taken me ages to write this post, mainly because I couldn't think of one thing about me, let alone five, that would be interesting or new to anyone other than family or friends. So here goes:


1) I am addicted to American Idol. I started watching in in the first season, hit the ceiling when Tamyra Gray was voted off, and haven't stopped watching. I'm shamelessly addicted to that feeling of shock/horror/satisfaction I get when America's votes agree or disagree with my own opinion. There is just something about the singers, Paula's weird antics, and Simon's snarky British humor that keep me hooked. However, I have never picked up the phone to vote for anyone -- oh, no, that would mark me as a true AI addict and I'm not that bad (am I?).


2) As a child, I was allergic to chocolate. It was truly unfair. My sister could eat all she wanted, but every time I ate chocolate, my eyes would swell up, becoming all watery and red and itchy. When this happened, my mother would make me go to school anyway, so I was forced to hide out in the bathroom, bathing my eyes in water, hoping against hope that I could get to class without looking like Rocky Balboa after a fight. Fortunately, I've outgrown the allergy, probably because I built an immunity to it by sneaking bits of chocolate here and there and to heck with the consequences.


3) I have always wanted to ski. Whenever we go to Tahoe and play in the snow, I cannot look at the skiers and snowboarders, gracefully swishing down the hill, without ski envy. I see the little kids with their goggles and helmets and wish my kids could do that too. I have three factors working against me. I come from the Philippines. I'm afraid of heights. And I hate going downhill fast. Skiing is like rock climbing for me: it's my idea of cool, but I don't think I'm cool enough to do it. Believe me, I've tried. I've taken lessons and worked my way up to a blue (for non-skiers like me, that stands for intermediate) slope, but never spent enough time in the snow to get comfortable. Then a whole year passes and I'm back to square one. This is definitely on my list of things to do before I die: get back on the slopes again and ski/snowboard down without falling.


4) I do not know how to close a Ziploc bag. This is one of my husband's biggest pet peeves. I swear, I really do close the bags, I pinch them tight and slide my finger along the ziploc line. But I cannot deny the fact that whenever my husband takes out the bag of cheese or ham or ravioli or whatever from the fridge, that darn zipper is just not closed. Same goes for screw-on tops for milk, soda or juice. The fizz always goes out of our sodas because the covers aren't screwed on properly. Once Graham took out a bottle of juice out, holding it by the top, and the whole thing fell out from under him and splashed to the floor.


5) I wear a size 10 shoe. (There, I've said it. That is like admitting I'm a compulsive eater!). I've always hated my big, boat-like feet. When I was 7, I could fit into my mothers shoes. When I was in 6th or 7th grade, I had to have shoes specially made for me because there were no ladies sizes big enough in the Philippines. The shoes they made for me were huge and clunky and awful. To me, big feet symbolizes all that is unsexy and mannish about me. Fortunately now I live in the US, where size 10 is large but not unheard of. I can buy any kind of shoe that I want. And my husband (yes, I did land a husband even with my man-feet!) still has larger feet than mine (but not by much). So I'm over it. Almost.


Now that I'm done, I'm tagging five other bloggers to continue the party:

Erika
Nicole
Laura
Lec
Risa

You guys, I hope you play along. I'd love to find out five more things about you, so when you're done, leave the link to your post in the comments section!

J is for Pumpkin

James and I are looking at an alphabet picture book. One letter he knows by heart is J, the first letter of his name.

me: What letter is this?

James: That's a J!

me: Yes, that's J.

James: "J" says what, mama?

me: "J" says Juh--Juh--Juh--Juh.

James (pointing to Jack-in-the-Box) : Juh--Juh--Juh--Jack in the Box!

me (pleased): Good!

James (jumping up and down): J is for Juh--Juh--Juh--Jump!

me (surprised he got two in a row): Wow, very good!

James (pointing to a jar of jellybeans): Juh--Juh--Juh--Jellybeans!

me (convinced my genius son will start reading tomorrow): Good boy, Jamie, good boy!

James (pointing to Jack-O-Lantern): Juh--Juh--Juh--Pumpkin!

Photo Hunters: Soft


I've decided to joint the Photo Hunter's scavenger hunt so I have an excuse to post photos from our photo archives for family and friends and visitors to enjoy. This week's theme is soft. For my first Photo Hunters entry, I went down memory lane to a Tahoe trip, two years ago. I'm not sure which is softer, the dog, Philip's velour jumpsuit or Philip himself.

For more Photo Hunters, click here.

Is A Puzzlement

I've just finished reading Phil Done's book, 32 Third Graders and One Class Bunny: Life Lessons From Teaching. His characterizations of his eight year old students are so spot on, I laughed aloud several times while reading the book. One of the funniest chapters, Why? was especially delicious. Here are selected "why's" from this chapter:

Why is the gumball machine in the museum lobby more interesting than the Van Gogh on loan from the Met?

Why don't we grade A, B, C, D, and E?

Why do kids know precisely how many days, hours, and minutes are left till their birthdays but still ask, "When's lunch?"

Why do all the animals decide it's time to make babies when we visit the zoo?

I have my own list of questions cannot answer. Here is a sample:

Why does my daughter have blond hair (when I'm a brown-haird, brown-eyed Filipina)?

Why do my boys have longer eyelashes than me, my husband or their sister?

Why, in my twins' preschool, do they have to share one photo of themselves together on the class bulletin board, when all the other kids get photos of their own?

Why, when I leave the kids with my husband on a Saturday morning, will he say, when I get back, "The kids were good as gold, I don't know why you always say they exhaust you"?

Why do DVD's have a region code programmed into them so that we can only watch DVD's purchased in the US and need to buy another DVD player to watch DVD's we've purchased in England?

Why does my son ask to go potty three times during a half-hour swimming class but goes only once in three hours at home?

Why can't I ever get rid of the jiggly flab around my belly button?

Why can't my husband get himself ready in the mornings in the same time it takes me to get myself and my three kids ready?

Why can my kids go out in subzero temperatures with just a tshirt or frolic in the ice-cold waters of Northern California beaches when their parents and all other grownups are standing by shivering in overcoats?

Why, even though they are identical twins, does Philip have eczema and a birthmark on his left shoulder while James doesn't?

Why are we still occupying Iraq?

Danged if I know. Someone, help me out here. Maybe no-one can answer these questions for me. As Yul Brynner, playing King Chulalongkorn, says in The King and I..... Is....A....Puzzlement!


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for more puzzles, click here.

I'm up on YouTube!

I thought Google was crazy to spend $1.65 billion to acquire YouTube . Sure, Google gains access to over 70 million users and 100 million eyeballs that view their videos each day. But can all the ads in the world and all the $1.99 music video downloads justify that amount? Time will tell. I suppose Google is uber-rich anyway and that $1.65 billion is just a tiny fraction of its own market valuation.

I stopped trying to figure out the stock market when I lost all that money in 2000. So I'm not going to waste my brain cells figuring out why they paid so much (and why I couldn't have been a YouTube employee when this happened!). But if you can't beat'em, join'em. And so I did. I have signed up with YouTube and now have my very own YouTube channel:

http://youtube.com/bonggamom

I have several of our family videos up on this channel, so follow the link to watch our videos! I'll be posting many more, so stay tuned. Also please leave comments on the site so I'll know who's watching.

I have to admit, it is really easy to upload the videos and even feature them on this site. And though I haven't watched too many of the videos on the site, I have to admit the ones I watched are hilarious. In our celebrity-reality-self-obsessed society, no wonder this site is so popular. Hey, those Google folks are smarter than I thought.

Love in the Snow

There was a lotta love last weekend on our winter trip. We try to go to the Tahoe/Reno area at least once a year so the kids get to play in the snow. They absolutely LOVED it. Graham and I are exhausted from helping them enjoy the snow, but we loved watching them. Check it out:

Love is working hard to build the biggest snowman ever....

..... then building a baby snowman so that the daddy snowman won't get lonely.


Love is tubing down the bunny hill again and again and again and again. Love is pulling your child up the bunny hill again and again and again.


Love is going out on the ice with your son even though you haven't skated in twenty years. Love is willing your legs to stay upright when your sons slips on the ice so you don't fall and he doesn't fall. Love is wanting to skate and being a little bit scared at first but trusting that your daddy won't let you fall.



As I said, love was ALL around!


For more expressions of love, click here.



Summer Camp Anxiety

I'm starting to feel the summer camp pressure. It's that time of the year when parents start figuring out which camps they want their kids to go to. The Bay Area Kid Fun website has a great section on summer camps in the area, and I've got summer camp information from three cities as well as three other places (soccer, ballet, YMCA and our local afterschool care center) and I'm still confused as to which ones my kids should attend.

It's even more difficult this year because Philip and James are living, breathing, thinking people who might actually notice that Natalie gets to take all kinds of cool lessons while they don't. So now I'm trying to look for interesting, inexpensive camps suited to their ages that happen to be going on at the same time. Oh, and Natalie wants to go to all the camps her friends are going to, so I have to factor that in, too. The biggest stumbling block, of course, is the "inexpensive" part. All the camps look so interesting but they cost anywhere from $100 to $350 per week. We're going to have to limit their camps to one or two plus swimming lessons. But which camps? Silly, but I'm all stressed out about it.

Still haven't had enough of my ranting and raving? Read my other post about summer camps on Silicon Valley Moms Blog.

32 Third Graders and One Class Bunny



I'm currently reading this book about life as a third-grade teacher. It is hilarious! The author, Phil Done, happens to be a third-grade teacher at my daughter's school. I know a mom with a child in his class, and he seems to be much beloved by his students. I know I would love for my kids to attend his class one day, in particular for Philip and James. There are so few male elementary school teachers, I just think he would be a great role model for the boys.



My First Ski Run

Here are Philip and James' first-ever attempts at skiing!

Philip Skiing


James Skiing