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!

Garden art by Grace.

A while back we bought this cute mosaic tile kit, and we finally got it out yesterday and worked on it. The directions were an amusing translation from (I think) the French; we were, for instance, "treasured" customers and the directions for mixing the cement involved grams. But Grace had a blast - she very dilligently adhered the tiles in the suggested pattern to form the image of a dolphin, and then we mixed the cement and poured it into the little mold. The tiles stuck, the mold worked, the cement hardened, and voila! a lovely mosaic tile with a dolphin, for decorating the garden.

Suburban chainsaw fun!

For some time we've been meaning to trim a branch from this beautiful old maple, because the branch spreads out over our neighbor's driveway and we're afraid that a snowstorm will take it down right onto her car. Not so good. We're also having the house painted (Van Courtland Blue from Benjamin Moore, for those who keep track of these sorts of things) and the painters are allegedly coming any! week! now! so it seemed like a good time to trim other branches that were touching the house and might get in the way of the painters. And once you head down that path... so Mike got the chainsaw, climbed the tree, tried with minimal success to teach me how to start the thing, finally had to start it himself while perched in the tree, and took the branch right off. We'd had the foresight to ask the neighbor to move her car, and she seemed only slightly irritated by that. When the branch came down, we could see that it was starting to rot inside and might well have come down under the weight of snow this winter. Peter was so impressed by the sound of the chainsaw that he dashed inside to get his hardhat. He and Grace sang a few rousing rounds of the Bob the Builder song (inspired by the hardhad) while they helped us pick up the debris.