"Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies"

So, I’ve got two boys. ‘Chalk’ Rigby and ‘Cheese’ Rigby.

Jack…
Simply. Cannot. Lie.

He tries; once he's thought about it for a moment, but then messes it up. We even got thrown off of a water slide at Center Parcs because Jack ‘fessed up at the wrong moment, after I told the slide-man at the top that he’d been on it before, despite being under the funny minimum height-measuring stick by a smidgeon.  So, it was the swimming pool walk of shame, right down past all the others, each then doubting their own ability to ride.

Master Oliver, however, has definitely got the 'little boy gene' for telling porkies. Sometimes it's just over embellishment, which as adults normally happens with your mates having a pint in the pub. But this kid's certainly a ‘live wire’.

Outright and not bothered, I'll see him do something, whether it's whack Jack or throw something, and then flat-out lie about it, to my face. Then, later, he'll then believe his version of events, fictitious of course, and then we'll have a repeat argument/discussion about it. 

I always had a good imagination, and this probably helped/hindered me and my lying ability as a child (don’t check this my folks!) and this is probably just what Oli is doing. It’s just the blatant-ness of it all which is amusing, but not helpful if you need to tell him off at the same time!!  Little snot.

Teeth (or lack of!)

So, Jack is (finally!) at that age where his teeth are starting to fall out.

Not because of them being gammy or manky or anything like that, but thanks for thinking it, all the same.

No, but instead, his teeth are being muscled-out by other bigger, newer, stronger teeth; ones that might last for his entire life, instead of these mamby-pamby baby ones that have only managed about 7 years. Pfft.

In the past couple of weeks, his fourth tooth has finally come out. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, except the third and fourth teeth were buddies and were the ones that usually greeted you during a smile; yes, I am badly referring to the two front teeth, at the top. These bad-boys are no more. (Well, unless you're the tooth fairy!!)

Whistling and lisp'ing is common place at the moment, and I'm sure that he'll just get used to them not being there, and the new ones will show up late to the party.

Of course, Oliver is a little jealous and can't understand why his teeth aren't yet falling out. He'll say something, pronounce it incorrectly, and when I correct him, he immediately blames his loose teeth, that he doesn't have.

General catch-up

The boys are both growing and growing, both physically and mentally. That sounds like an obvious thing for anyone to say, especially being as I live in the same house as them, but sometimes when you see micro-changes in something, it's hard to see the longer-term changes.

Jack is getting taller. He's still bony thin, but I always was right up until... I got married, I think! He eats all of his food and then some, but he just seems to have the same 'shape' about him that I always had.

Oliver is racing ahead at the moment. He's getting much heavier as the months pass, as he's changed from having a small kid shape to having a little-big-boy look. You know the one I mean, he's certainly not fat, although he does eat almost EVERYTHING we have that's edible, but he's a lot more thick-set than Jack is.

To put paint on that picture, if I hold Jack's arm, my finger touches my thumb as it closes around him. Master Oliver, however, my fingers area noticeable distance apart, where the meat on his arm is.

Oliver has been carrying on with his reading, both with Claire and I, but also on the Reading Eggs website, which he's absolutely racing through. And I don't mean that in the sense that he's whizzing through but not actually understanding what the letters or words mean. What I mean, is that he's shown the letters or words in the lesson and then he's tested on it such that it proves (or not!) that he understood what's going on. And the fact that we can sit there watching him do all of this and understand what he's meant to be doing without us helping a great deal, sort of solidifies it for me really. But Claire is still spending a lot more time with him and his reading than I am with him, and she's putting the same fantastic amount of effort in that she did do with Jack, and it's definitely paying off. We couldn't get out of the car the other day at Tescos, as Oliver was still reading the letters and words from the builders van parked next to us in the car park.

Everything seems to be 'opened up' to him, now that he's able to read - it's sort of magical watching the learning process happen, and is very hard to explain. Yes, I want to big-him-up as his dad, but he's grasped the idea of what reading is all about and that's not something you can make him do, it's something that has clicked in his head.

When I was at university, and I might have mentioned this before, but one of the threads of the geeky computers course I was doing, was on Artificial Intelligence. The lecturer at the time, Anton something or other, made a point about AI, and about how very difficult it was to make a machine or computer application actually understand, and how much more difficult it was for them to learn. He said something along the lines of "if you want to *see* learning take place, have children", but I'd guess that being around them would work too. Basically, looking back now, I can see what he was getting at, as at the time, having children was not on my radar. He's right, and watching them both learn, adapt and understand new things that get thrown at the every single day is very... cool. Not in a 15-year old 'that's cool', but a gentle rocking/nodding action of the head, coupled with a slight up-turned lips-into-a-smile agreeance whilst hum-muttering a single voweled word 'huhm' sort of cool.

Having said all this wonderful stuff about them, I think it's fair to say that there's no chance that we'd have any more of the little monsters. If they're not waking up at 2:30am and banging about en-route to the bathroom for a poo, and announcing their success, they're arguing about which tv program to watch or which character they are in their imaginary/make-belief games.

Little darlings. Must start counting the days until they're old enough to start university...