Vacation!

We lucky ducks were in Turks and Caicos week before last for the Sanders Family Vacation. Our set up was dreamy: our house was right on a pretty sandy beach on a calm bay. Every so often a prickly little sea star or sea urchin would creep up toward shore to remind us that it wasn't just a big, beautiful wading pool. A few pix below, more here.

Some moments:

1) Elijah showed up with one very, very loose front tooth. The real highlight was watching his innovative, preservationist approach to eating, where he could bite anything without letting it touch that front tooth.

2) Naked kid swimming: Sam and fam made their very tight connection but their luggage didn't, so Elijah and Dash had no swimsuits that morning. They went swimming in the raw and Rosemary tore off her swimsuit in solidarity.

3) Seeing an octopus out of water - literally - as it tried to hunt down a crab on a low-tide rock ledge near our house. It scrambled back in and disappeared right quick when we approached.

4) Early mornings with Rosemary, Birthday for Frances, cups of coffee (me, not her), and walks to our watery staircase.

5) Jason, John, and Elijah played touch football on the beach and Jason threw a ball that finally knocked Elijah's front tooth out. It flew up, up, up in the air aaaaaand...disappeared onto the sandy beach amidst a whole host of pearly-white, tooth-sized shells. Good camouflage. Tooth hunt was ultimately successful and the tooth fairy came all the way to T&C.

Tooth hunters:

5) Next day at dinner Elijah's second front tooth fell out, totally unceremoniously. This may or may not have been due to playing football with Jason again. Tooth fairy summoned back to T&C.

6) Kayaking to see the snails in what Rosemary dubbed "Seattle," a teeny tiny beach down the bay from us.

7) Lots of swimming and jumping and kicking in the pool.

8) Watching Dash and Rosie work together making indoor pillow forts and watery canals on the beach.

Drama Faces

Excited:

Surprised:

Cactus face, as she calls this expression:

Thrilled:

Angry:

Done:

Pinkalicious

From January, part of R's bday festivities: an exciting trip to Union Square to see the musical Pinkalicious (based on a favorite book).

Big Boast

While sitting on the couch this morning:

"Look at me, I'm 3! Inside of me looks 4. My brain looks 4."

Two of the Three Rs

They've been doing a lot of name-tracing at Rosemary's school and all of the sudden she did this all on her own the other day while making a birthday card for my dad. Well, I guess not 100 percent on her own since I was reminding her of the letters but still my jaw dropped since it was so out of the blue.

There are some changes on the numbers front too. She has been counting up to 13 for ages and ages -- since long before she had any idea of what numbers really were, and was really just memorizing words. But she topped out at thirteen for a long time...maybe a year or so? Or more? I figure it is lack of emphasis around these parts - since after all we spend a lot of time on Art and Letters. Anyhow, recently she's skipped from 13 to 16 and stopped at 19 - until you remind her of 20 and 21 at which point she can usually get up to 29. And finally, finally she has brought 14 and 15 into the fold. Now I can teach her cribbage.

Oh boy!

Wintry Mix

Chicago's Snow Dump 2011 makes our winter here look like child's play. We've just been getting an easygoing 10 or 19 inches of fresh accumulation every so often, enough to enjoy making snow angels and then deal with a few days of slip-sliding around on Brooklyn's icy sidewalks. (Manhattan, meanwhile, is pretty much like nothing happened. You dress for Brooklyn and then look like a sherpa with unwieldy shoeware when you emerge in Manhattan.)

Here's our back courtyard - this is from last Thursday.

Birthday festivities continued this past weekend with two fun evenings with all four grandparents. Leave it to me not to get a picture of anyone but Rosie.

Real birthday cakes are long gone but R's wooden cake continues to feed and entertain the hungry critters.

Strange winter olympic sport, the junk mail toss:

Excited to wear / use new rain gear even though it turned out not to be raining.

Since last week we have been watching Annie -- the first half only so far, but several times. She doesn't get the plotline at all; the first time she watched it she got freaky upset when Annie went to Daddy Warbucks's place and kept moaning, "When is she going to go home?" I guess not surprisingly she's distressed by the idea of Annie leaving home without what she thinks is her mom. I told her it was just a weeklong vacation and then she calmed down...hopefully by the time we actually get around to watching the second half of the movie she will decide Daddy Warbucks's mansion is better than Ms. Hannigan's orphanage. For now she keeps saying, "We loooove you, Ms. Hannigan," but like she truly means it, not sarcastically.

Better yet we should just stop watching it for now but of course she is obsessed with it. I have caught Rosemary a few times trying to instigate pillow fights with friends just like the orphans do. And cleaning the floor! I think I can use this for good.