Growing Up and Gratitude

     I'm composing this post in my head this evening while Eva slips into a snuggly slumber in my lap. They're so sweet when they're unconscious, aren't they? My memory recalls moments when she was a tiny baby (though she was never tiny) and I would hold her in my arms in this same wide chair. I would look out the window at the broiling clouds and get lost in thought—or no thought—with Eva’s newborn breath making a spot of my neck warm as she slept on my chest. Soft quiet inhalation, soft sighing exhalation. 
     I gazed at her, memorizing her every millimeter, her every angle. I watched her eyebrows come in and how the deep blue of her irises had more and more pale blue flecks in them as the days passed. The flecks slowly decorated her irises but left a thick deep blue ring around the outer edge. I gazed at her. She gazed at me.  She curled up in my embrace and inside my heart and slept deeply.
     And now, I gaze at my little big girl resting her head against my chest and smile to myself. She is changing, growing so much. 


1.   She has just grown out of her car seat and we put her new booster seat in today. She was SO excited and felt very grown up! 
2.   She's lost three teeth now (we found the third one in her bed one morning after it fell out overnight) all in a row. She sticks her tongue through the gap and smiles widely. As before, she took her Tooth Fairy money to the Farmer's Market and gave it to one of her favorite buskers: Richard, a kindly man in a pressed white dress shirt and Carhartt overalls who sings old southern work songs and honkey-tonk country, a capella. 

3.   She has been totally interested in outer space lately. She wants to go there and to learn all about it. I'm ecstatic about this because astronomy is one of my favorite subjects to go on and on about (after meteorology and maps). So we looked at NASA images of the moon surface, the earth, the sun, galaxies, nebula. It. Blew. Her. Mind. I talked about how there is no sound in outer space, which I knew would be really intriguing to her since she is skittish about noise. We got a book at the library about Mars and a Bill Nye DVD about the Moon.  I'm gonna tell her everything she can handle about astronomy. 

4.   Her recent favorite show to watch is Stomp (a dance troupe that uses the body and ordinary objects to create a percussive theatre performance). Everything in our house is a percussive instrument to tap or bang on. We've collected an assortment of sticks, brooms, tubes, tubs, boxes and plastic bags for her to stretch her creativity. One of the acts the performers do is an increasingly difficult call-and-response rhythm with the audience. The other day, while we were in the kitchen, Eva was hopping and stomping and clapping, as per usual. She turned to me and clapped twice. Pause. Clap clap. Pause. Clap clap. I responded: clap clap. She squealed and clap-clapped again. I responded. She tried out a few other rhythms and jumped up and down laughing with joy when I repeated her rhythms back to her. Something major connected in her brain with this one!
5.   I was in the shower; had just turned the water off. A little hand pushes the shower curtain aside. She is holding a granola bar. "Here mommy! A granola bar for YOU!" "Oh thank you honey! But I don't want one right now--I'm all wet." She stares at me, arms limply at her sides, a granola bar in each hand. She brightens, "I have a granola bar today, too! You help me open it, please?" I tell her I will after I dry off. She stares blankly at me again and toddles off. When I come out in my robe, there are two granola bars (still in wrappers) on the living room floor and she'd moved on to something else.  
6.   She was "helping me" fold a load of towels. I showed her how to fold a washcloth--two steps. She was so excited and practiced over and over and over, talking her way through it. Joy for new small things!
7.   I had a hamper full of darks on the couch to fold. She dumped them out on the couch (Oh! Is she going to help fold?); took the hamper to the floor, climbed in and watched TV.


Eva starts Kindergarten tomorrow. She's back at gymnastics next week and will be spending an afternoon a week at Montessori soon. I'm feeling blessed, grateful and smiled upon. I was sweeping out the garage the other day and focused on feeling gratitude--not thinking the words or lists of things I'm grateful for--just feeling. 

Missing: Two Teeth

No really. They're missing. We don't know where they went.

Eva lost her first tooth the other day while at summer camp. It was super wiggly but IN when I dropped her off and was OUT when I picked her up. She didn't know it was gone and neither did the teachers. I'm assuming it came out with a bite of sandwich and ended up in her belly with her lunch...until it comes out the other end. I'm not going to "look for it" but if it shows up readily...well, I don't think I'll wash it off and keep it anyway. The idea of keeping her discarded little fangs grosses me out a bit. So to keep one that traveled through her digestive tract...*shudder*. No thank you. Besides, the Tooth Fairy already came and left her a dollar in her little box under her pillow. It's not required, you know, to present said fallen-out tooth in order to receive the prize. The Tooth Fairy knows she lost her tooth. The Tooth Fairy knows everything, like Santa Claus or a mother-in-law.

So I moped around the other day, feeling bummed about not having her first tooth (her FIRST TOOTH, dammit!) and collected sympathetic outrage from other mommies. I ripped weeds out of the soil by the handful and allowed myself to feel annoyed; to feel that *ping* in my chest that my girl keeps getting more grown up.

The next day, I took Eva to summer camp and talked to the teachers again. They were (rightfully) sympathetic for my loss as a mommy. I warned them, "The tooth right next to the gap is REALLY loose and will probably come out today. I tried to pull it this morning. Keep an eye out". One teacher, a mother of a young girl who'd recently lost her first couple teeth, was especially determined to catch this loose tooth.

A few hours later, I came to pick Eva up. She ran across the yard to me grinning, "My mommy's here! That's MY mmmoommyyyy!" Hug hug, yeah, yeah, yeah. I pulled her bottom lip down. The second tooth was gone. Crap! I turned to one of the teachers, "She lost another tooth?" Blank stare. The above-mentioned sympathetic teacher came over and exclaimed, "She lost it?! I kept looking and she had it! I sat with her at lunch and checked after almost every bite! It was there when she went out to play! I don't know how this could have happened. I'm so sorry!" Well, thanks, lady. Sorry helps as does the obvious effort she put in to make sure I got that tooth. Alas.

It's probably out in the yard, mixed in with all the tiny pieces of gravel and dirt and tree bits. Maybe it's in the chicken coop. Whatever. The Tooth Fairy will still come. She knows all; maybe she knows where these two teeth disappeared to.

P.S. We've been talking about this whole Tooth Fairy story as a family, preparing Eva for what to do and what happens. She repeats, "My tooth comes out and I give to Mommy and Daddy! Then in the box, the Tooffairy comes when I sleep and get MONIES! Put in my pig bank." Ta da! I asked her yesterday what she wanted to spend her money on. She said "Put in my pig bank. We go to Farmer's Market? With Mommy and Daddy? I give it to violin, singing man, oooh, big bass!" (She wants to give it to one of the buskers at the market. How cool is that?) I love my girl.