little buddy ... or how I learned to eat chicken nuggets with only my front teeth

When our eyes met in the hallway today, we both broke out in ear to ear smiles - only I have all my teeth (so far, knock on wood). We started walking down the hallway to the cafeteria and I was asking him about his fall break and he was telling me about riding his orange bicycle when ....... he reached up and held my hand.

We had chicken nuggets and potatoes and, despite my best efforts to convince him to "eat something green", he had a roll and I had the green beans. He told me about getting 100 pieces of candy last Halloween and how his "little brother, well not his LITTLE brother 'cause he's a baby, but my next little brother who's my best friend and whose name is Jayston" is about to have a birthday and how his own birthday was the same week school started and how if you eat with only your front teeth you can only take really little bites and you get crumbs everywhere especially when you don't have any front teeth (insert breath here).

To quote Holly Hunter from one of the greatest movies ever: "I LOVE HIM SOOOOOOOO MUCH!!!!" (Raising Arizona. Thank you Coen brothers for your brilliance.)

After lunch we walked hand in hand to the library and picked out books about insects because he was "in a bug mood". He thought it HIGHLY entertaining that I also have to wear glasses to read. We read about how male crickets "chirp" with their front wings and got off on a rabbit-chasing tangent about the similarity to playing the violin and since I just happen to have Joshua Bell's recording of Vivaldi's Violin Concertino in E (from the Spring Movement of "The Four Seasons"), we snuck in a little listen. We also read Eric Carle's "The Very Clumsy Click Beetle" and learned three new verbs: ambled, scurried and slithered. We barely made it through the Little Critter book, "I Just Forgot!" (both of us racing on each page to see who could find the spider first) when the teacher conducted some mystical magical hand-clapping maneuver signifying that our time was over for today. He put our books away, got in line, waved with his whole arm, then ran back over and hugged me.

167 hours until I get to do it again. :)