Good stuff around here lately.

Papa came to visit….

Grandma Sam came to visit….

Luke made a pair of "bee-noculars" in preschool and didn't take them off all day….

…and Halina lost a tooth and turned 7!

For Halina's birthday, we took friends to see the Frog & Toad musical. Here's a two-minute slideshow, with some music from the Broadway recording.

Halina had her birthday classroom celebration today. She was interviewed by Mme. Gigi, who flew in all the way from Paris (her amazing teacher). I brought in a snack of frozen grapes and pineapple. Luke was there. Everyone created a page for her birthday book.

Tonight as I put on shoes for my late night exercise class, she begged me not to go. Then I got a little weepy realizing that when I saw her again she'd be seven.

Birthdays. Not always so easy. A little scary, a little tender. Then new, good stuff happens and you snap out of it. Right? Right. It's happening already.

Looking over her birthday book tonight.

Halina, I couldn't be more proud or grateful. xox.

After turning off the light tonight, I asked Halina how she feels about turning seven soon. "Good," she said right away. It was quiet for a moment in the darkness.

"Well," she added, "half my body feels good and half feels kind of bad." She reached for my hand and intwined her small fingers with mine. "Because I like being six."

Another tooth is loose. The first one to be loose since she lost her two bottom teeth a year ago, right around her sixth birthday.

What do you like about being six?, I asked, knowing as soon as I said it that it was the wrong question. After she fumbled around with that for a minute, I said, you're excited to be seven, but you have to say goodbye to six. You'll never be six again.

"Not this six," she agreed. "Just the kind that's in sixteen."

I let that silently wallop me for a moment.

You know, the six you are now will still be inside you, I said. Still a part of you. Just like the five year old you is inside you.

"And the four year old me is still inside me, and the three year old, and two year old, and one year old?"

Yep. 

She fell asleep and, for a bunch of reasons, I shed a few tears in the pitch black room, appreciating my six year old girl to pieces.

Here's Halina (in the stripes) dancing with a friend at assembly this morning.

Pumpkins at preschool field trip with friends.

Driving the horsies & stage coach. H'yah!

Warm fall afternoons at the park.

Cold fall mornings with cozy accessories.

Halloween monkey (climbing).

With tail.

Halloween Dorothy.

This was the second year for this lovely costume. (Somehow my mom had the time & energy to transform me, by hand, into a cardinal and a painting-the-roses-red card, and a "queen size" box of Tide.)

Preparing goodies to "sell" (give out) when the doorbell rings. Her favorite part.

Post Halloween Eeyore. Ghost in the window.

These are all pictures from my phone. Not the best quality. But I had to break the blogging silence and report on these two briefly. They are becoming big kids before my very eyes.

Saturday afternoon at the playground.