Pink Asparagus

The tooth fairy will be visiting us tonight.

Audrey, her BFF Madeleine, and their respective families spent the afternoon at the zoo celebrating Father’s Day. Happy Father’s Day Peter & Morgan.

I still haven’t read the manual to my new camera, so I can’t take credit for this picture; it was just luck. Thankfully Joshua will be here in two weeks, he can give me a crash course in intentional, as opposed to accidental, prettiness.

We’re having the most bizarre weather here. It’s wet. And there are tornadoes. Our sprinkler system and A/C haven’t come out of hibernation.

The good parts? Our lawn is green, our plants are lush and the fire danger is low.

The bad parts? Peter has to mow the lawn every week and I have allergies for the first time in my adult life.

For months Elliot has lamented the losing of teeth. When will he lose them? Will he be 5? 6? Will it hurt? Will it take long? When will it start?

It started.

Tonight at dinner he says that his tooth hurts. So, I reach across the table fully explecting to pull corn kernal out from between his teeth.

His tooth wiggled.

I wiggled it again.

My eyes welled up.

When I told him what was happening a huge grin spread across his face.

Here’s Elliot, in what might be the last photographic evidence of this particular smile. An all-baby tooth smile.

Somehow it has escaped my noticing that I have aged. I guess I thought that I looked the same as the day Elliot was born (nearly six years ago). Or maybe the same as when Audrey was born (nearly four years ago). I know that doesn’t make any sense. But really? the changes were gradual (maybe?) and constant, so only by looking at pictures can I see the changes.

The picture of me and Elliot is one of a few all taken at the same time. And with a few, I really was taken aback at how young I looked. I mean not like a teenager or anything, but I wouldn’t have guessed that girl was approaching 30.

Also? I am not enjoying the grow-out phase of my hair. I’ve decided that after three years of varying short-short I want my longer hair back. It’s not as graceful a prospect as I had hoped.

Any tips for stylish hair while growing it out? Your favorite headband or product? Or did you just wear really big jewelry to detract from what was going on on the top of your head?

Hmmm, I think I am wearing the same earings in all three pictures. I should branch out a little more often.

Poor kid came home early from school today because he was sick. Sick enough that he wanted to lay down and rest. Sick enough that we went to the doctor. Strep. Totally should have bought that stock in whoever makes amoxycilin six years ago.

After Elliot was born a nurse who hadn’t yet met us walks into my room, looks at Elliot, looks at Peter and says, “Well, we know who daddy is.” At the time I was all “heh, yes my baby is as gorgeous as my husband.” Now that it’s almost six years later I like to retell the story more as “uhm, yes – the baby that was removed from the giant gash in my abdomen does have a striking resemblance to the man sitting over there.”

Peter’s mother tells a story that when he was little he could charm all the elderly church ladies out of their purse candy. He’d bat his long eyelashes and stare with a face that I assume looked a lot like this:

When Elliot was a toddler I took him to urgent care for what turned out to be another ear infection. He was as adorable as possible, chatting up the doctor. She looked right into his big blue eyes and said, “you are handsome.” Then she looked at me and said, “good luck.”

This son of mine? I think he’ll be a heart breaker. But of the quiet kind. I think he’ll be too busy presiding over Chess tournaments to notice girls. They’ll just have to suffer in silence. Swoon over those eye lashes of his. Write his name with swirlies and hearts on their notebooks. And if he really is like his dad, I don’t think he’ll have any idea.