Ahoy, the tooth fairy!

Today, Grace lost her first tooth. This was a long-awaited event (by which I mean - *months* of anxious anticipation) and we were all happy that it happened at home instead of at school. (Although there is a school protocol for lost teeth, involving the school nurse and a special envelope.)

Grace's note to the tooth fairy (included with permission of the author) is as follows: "Dear tooth fairy, this is my ferst tooth out. It did NOT hert! It came out at 2:30 today. Love, Grace. P.S. My new one is already coming in."

We are eagerly awaiting bedtime, and the tooth fairy's expected reply. Our estimate of the going rate for teeth these days is $1.

We made leaf collages!

We collected fall leaves for a couple of days, and then since we didn't have the camera during the initial collection periods Grace insisted on *staging* some leaf collection for the camera. Sigh. Then the kids arranged the leaves on waxed paper, I ironed, we did it again just for fun, and they have pretty leaf collages that won't get all crumbly and dry. Next up: the exciting unveiling of the dried flowers Peter collected and pressed!

Cousin fun.

So we spent a day in Hyde Park with one batch of cousins, which involved lots of silliness and running around and eating good things and collapsing in exhaustion afterwards. Peter showed unusual reluctance to pose for a picture with the big kids, so we have lots of cute pictures with him mugging and being as amusingly uncooperative as possible. On the upside, no child fell into the fish pond, and no fish were harmed in their enthusiastic investigation of whether it was possible to catch goldfish with only one's hands.

Suddenly, we're the blue house on the corner.

Here's the new paint on the house - we're now down a storm door, but feast your eyes on that lucious purple front door ("Purple Rain," in case you're jonesing for one of your own.) Plus a cute new mailbox, nice new shutters, courtesy of Mike, and (eventually) a matchy-matchy front doormat, because this is suburbia, after all. There's also a bonus shot of Peter, who carefully took a plant off a stepladder that acts as a plant stand, dragged the ladder over to a tree, climbed up as far as he could, and told me he looked like "a REAL garbageman." Work that out if you can: it's the miracle of being three.

Bulbs for spring!

We planted some bulbs recently, some daffodil and some allium. Grace and Peter were both struck by how much the bulbs looked like onions or garlic (Peter even started to unwrap some) and we talked a bit about how allium are closely related to onions. Because we painted the house blue (the royal we, of course, since two busy parents plus two small kids equals one unpainted house) we thought that purple allium and white daffodils would look pretty next spring. I'm also thinking about some nice, big butterfly bushes on either side of the door, which is now bright, bright purple. House pictures coming soon!