Recent Jakeism's

These are the things that I have heard Jake say lately.

To Rainia: “I hate you, but you’re cute”

To Me: “Your face is ugly but your hair is very beautiful, and that is why I love you.”


And the moral decision of his young life:

Recently Jake lost his tooth:






That night, he put the tooth under his pillow, woke up the next morning to check, and his tooth was still there. Rick and I explained that sometimes the tooth-fairy is very busy going to people’s houses, and it takes 2 nights. He played with his tooth. Yes, I know how disgusting that sounds, but it was in a ziplock bag. Anyway, he played with his tooth, and unfortunately, lost it. He was VERY sad. One of the other kids gave him the idea to write a note to the tooth-fairy, explaining that he lost his tooth, and then lost his tooth. He did this, and to his delight, the next morning there were three dollars under his pillow. He was excited, held and loved his dollars, and then, this evening, we offered to take him to the dollar store. He was very sweet, and decided to take Joshua and Andrew with him, since he had 3 dollars. Andrew declined, but Josh took him up on his offer, and they went to the dollar store, spending a dollar each, which left Jake with one dollar. This evening, as we were getting ready for bed, came his big moral dilemma.

He decided that since it worked to put the letter about the lost tooth the other night, it would probably work again tonight, even though he actually didn’t lose another tooth. So he wrote this:






Wow. I was shocked to the point of confusion. I was both proud and disappointed at the same time. I was quite impressed with his ingenuity, but could not believe that he would feel ok about telling such a blatant lie. I knew that I had to somehow turn this into a lesson, but how?

Rick and I took turns asking him gentle questions. Some of the questions included:

“What do you think will happen if the tooth-fairy finds out you’re lying?”
“How will you feel tomorrow if there IS money, and you know that you lied to get it?”
“What about God?”
“What if there is another little boy who lost a real tooth tonight, and the tooth-fairy is busy coming to our house?”

We left the decision up to him, not trying to sway him one way or the other, Just carrying on conversation. I could see the struggle in his face as he pondered his decision, and he ultimately decided not to leave the note, saying that he had another loose tooth anyway. We both gave him a big hug, and told him that we thought he made the right decision. Later, when it was just the two of us, I asked him why he decided not to leave the note. His answer gave me warm fuzzies in my heart. “Because I didn’t wanna lie mommy.”