The other day Zach tweeted “One, two, three, four brush ’em, brush ’em, brush some more.  Four, three, two, one, brushing teeth is really fun.”  My face lit up like fireworks on the Fourth of July when I saw this tweet.  It’s the little ditty I used to “sing” to the kids when it was teeth brushing time.

I came up with it one night when the kids were little and squirmy. They didn’t care much for sitting still for two minutes of teeth brushing.  And I didn’t care much for holding them down to brush their teeth.  So one night as they squirmed and fussed about having their teeth brushed I started counting.  I got to four and it rhymed with more.  I counted backwards and one rhymed with fun.  The kids caught on. And it became our nighttime ritual.  They would each take turns lying on their backs in the hallway just outside of the bathroom.  I would sit on the ground with their heads in my lap, scrubbing their teeth with little toothbrushes as I chanted this little song until we got through two minutes of brushing.  They stopped squirming at toothbrushing time and they started counting along with me.

Eventually this nighttime ritual gave way to the kids becoming more independent at bedtime and it fell to the wayside.  I had actually forgotten about it until I saw it on Zach’s Twitter feed.  I couldn’t believe he remembered it.

He and I talked about it today as we sat in the pediatrician’s office for a routine check up.  (A funny little aside…Zach, my man-child said, as we walked into his doctor’s office “I love coming to the pediatrician.”)  I started to sing it in the exam room and Zach said “I tweeted that the other day.”  With a huge smile on my face, I told him I knew.  I had seen it.  He told me, with a tinge of pride in his voice, it got re-tweeted and favorited quite a bit.  He went on to tell me that kids came up to him in school saying it.  And he told them all it’s what I used to sing to them at teeth brushing time.

A goofy smile is plastered on my face right now as I think about this man-child tweeting something he remembered from his childhood and sharing a piece of life in our house when he was a little boy.

Oh, for the love of my children…