We have signs all over the house. Some are labels, some are direction markers, and others are dire warnings. A visitor to our home might ask "Uh, what's up with all the signs?"

Well, let me go back to Gavin's infanthood. When he was little, we put up index cards on everything to help him learn to read. We labeled the doors, windows, fridge, tv, etc. I even wore one around my neck that read "Daddy." Due to autism and the circumstance that he didn't speak until he was into his 3rd year, we had no idea whether or not he gave a hoot about all the signs. Eventually the signs came down and the scotch tape was scraped off. Gavin began to communicate and learned to read, and is an academic all-star in first grade presently. Enough bragging, I'll try to make my point now.

As it turns out, he did pay attention to the signs when he was a baby. How do I know this? Because he told me. He just brought it up with me one day. He asked "Dad, why don't we have signs on stuff anymore?" To my amazement, he then proceeded to tell me about all the different signs he remembered on all of our stuff. I couldn't believe it. He said "Why was there a sign in my crib that said 'Jeep'? That was so silly."

How could he remember those details?

Now he wants his baby brother Bodie to have the same experience with the signs. Gavin has diligently made labels for everything again, from the floor to the ceiling. I've carefully followed his instructions on where to tape them.

The little 3x5 cards are one thing, but lately he's moved onto printer paper and the signs are becoming fairly elaborate. Every corner of our house now has a direction assigned to it, such as "The South East." Near the walk to our front door there's a set of signs that read "Go North West to enter our home." Then "Welcome to the Compass house." It's getting out of hand, but its pretty funny. Paper's cheap, and its good writing practice for him.

 My favorite sign so far was the wasp warning. We had a family of wasps take residence in the soffit above the door, so Gavin immediately whipped up this doozy:

It reads "No going out this door thers a wasp." The blue figure with the red slash obviously means the warning is intended for all humans inside our house. He says he wants to be a sign painter when he grows up. I think he has a great mind for it!

Gavin has lost his first tooth. It has been a harrowing experience for him. When he first showed me that his tooth was loose, he was very worried about it. So concerned, in fact, that his eyes filled up with tears at the thought of not having that particular tooth in his mouth anymore. I reassured him that he would get another, bigger better tooth in its place that would last for the rest of his life, as long as he brushes it before bed every night. He still sat there, wiggling his tooth with his finger, quietly fretting and ruminating on what I had told him. Finally he said, his voice cracking with despair, "But if I never get a new tooth, I will be a silly adult!"

To lose a piece of yourself, I guess, is a little scary.  I guess that's why someone came up with the idea of the tooth fairy? She's a great diversion from the trauma of the extraction, but for Gavin that idea only added to his anxiety. When we put him to bed that night, he couldn't shut his eyes. He said he was worried about the Tooth Fairy, how she would get in, what she would look like, etc. I stayed in the room on the bottom bunk that night with Garrett, listening to Gavin toss and turn anxiously above us, constantly checking under his pillow to make sure the tooth was still there, until he finally fell asleep.

At some point in the night the tooth fairy did slink into the room and do her duty. She was so quiet even I missed her appearance. In the morning, I was already up and sitting at my computer when Gavin came out with an unsettled look on his face. He paced back and forth in the office in front of me, as he normally does when he has a deep thought.
Finally I asked him "Did the Tooth Fairy come last night?"
He looked in the direction of his bedroom and nodded, his tongue feeling the blank space on the  front of his grill.
"Did she take your tooth?"
"Yes," he stated with tear filled brown eyes. I hugged him and asked "Well, did she leave anything else under your pillow?"
"Two things," he whispered. "I didn't touch them."
I went into his room and retrieved the objects: A shiny 50 cent piece and a little pink thank you note. I handed them to Gavin and he held them cautiously. Eventually he sat on the couch and read the note, which praised him on the excellent condition of the outgoing tooth, and reminded him that soon he would have a new one to care for. After studying the note and the coin for a while, he simply commented that he "Never saw a penny this big before" and plunked it in his piggy bank, and that was that. Losing a tooth is not as bad as it seems, I guess.

I can't believe our first little Snugfits model is about to turn four! He still seems like a baby to me, maybe because I see him on our website everyday modeling some funny onesie or another on his chubby little baby body. He still has that thick marshmallow look to him, but now he's a taller marshmallow.

He's been riding Gavin's bike lately, much to Gavin's dismay, instead of the bigwheel. They fight over it constantly. Now I know where the phrase "Knock down, drag out" came from: Somebody somewhere had a 6 and a 4 year old brawling over a bike. The helmets and kneepads are employed more as combat armor than bike crashes.

The new thing is to hook up the baby trailer behind the little bike and pull Bodie around the circle, like a little rickshaw. It's a riot! Bodie loves it, but needless to say, Gavin and Garrett don't do well at taking turns on the bike. Sara and I decided it's time for Garrett to have his own two wheeler.

Gavin and I made a special trip to pick out a bike for Garrett. First to Target  (they always get first dibs on my dollars, before the cash gets inevitably sucked into the supermassive black hole across the street with initials WM). Gavin was extremely overstimulated with the excitement of the bike hunt. He was stimming around my red cart, hopping and skipping, staring at the lights on the ceiling then at the floor, bumping into Target patrons on occasion. I'm used to apologizing for him, since usually he's completely unaware of others when he's in that state. We finally made it to the bike rack at the back of the store. A quick scan of the bikes concluded that I indeed would have to feed more money to the juggernaut across the street. Target has squat for kids bikes. Oh, but Gavin had several picked out within the first 45 seconds. Unfortunately, Garrett would need stilts under his feet to reach the pedals.

Out the door we went to the world's largest employer, where we were greeted with a smile and an odd look as Gavin's excited stimmy dancing and humming around me was reaching an uncontrollable crescendo. We found the perfect bike right off the bat. It's a bright green bmx style Hotwheels edition - complete with training wheels already installed and a sweet hand throttle that makes a revving up noise when you twist the handle! Garrett's going to go berserk when he sees this tricked out ride!

We're going to make him search the house and yard for the bike on his birthday. It's so much fun - I make little clues for him and he has to figure out each clue to get to the next one, the excitement building with every step. The clues say things like "Your next clue is on the trunk of our biggest tree…" It'll be a riot. Now I just have to figure out where to hide this bright green bike...