Birthday, Front Tooth, Beach, etc (to be continued)

Arthur locked me out of this account.  This is Ok with me  because I do a lot of writing at my day job.  However, I just can't stand to see Peter over at the Rock blog taking over as the spokesperson for all Vinings West of the Mississippi, so here goes.

Theo: Theodotia Bradford turned 5 on July 7, 2013.  Thank you for all of your birthday wishes. Below you can see the birthday girl and her sister at the birthday girl table. Theo celebrated with a camping trip to the Oregon Coast with "my friend Sara", Sara's mother Daniel, father Bangbiscuit, sister Lucia and the Rock-Vinings. See Peter Rock's blog for more details.  Elsie and I stayed home while Elsie recovered from some sort of violent vomit illness.  We made lots of paperchains for Theo's birthday and decorated the dining room with them and many yards of finger-knitting (see below).

Theo later had a joint birthday party with Tumbleweed friends Gus, Kai and Sara.  These four friends started at Tumbleweed 4 1/2 years ago.  Here is an old photograph of Theo, Gus and Kai:

And here is a photograph of our last Tumbleweed birthday party.  We had some sack races, a kickball game, and a gorilla chase.  As usual, at least one child was scared to tears by the gorilla. I will miss these gatherings at parks, with no-presents and bring-your-own cups/plates/utensils.  For their next birthdays, Theo and Elsie are demanding Chuckie Cheese parties with mandatory presents . 

Theo is an interesting 5 year old.  She told me the other day that her "boogers are sooo delicious" and tasted a few scoops right in front of me, murmuring, "Mmmm, so good".  Also, today she yelled, "I can't hear with these headphones! Dammit!" while watching some IPAD video on our drive back from the Coast. Who is raising this child? 

Elsie: Elsie is growing right up.  Last night, she (and Theo) attended a fancy dinner with the Oregon State Bar Estate Planning Executive Comittee and consumed a shrimp cocktail and a filet mignon, along with many pieces of bread slathered with butter.  I was very proud of her manners.  (Theo was also very well-mannered at the dinner and aware of the manners of others -- she pointed out, with a discrete whisper, a man at the table with his elbows on the table, very bad manners).

This morning, Elsie lost another tooth.  Her father, Arthur Bradford, really wanted to pull the tooth right out, especially when she had it rotated at a 90 degree angle to her gums.  Luckily he was out of town for two weeks so she could let it slowly loosen.  And here she is, minus babytooth #3:

Elsie doesn't believe in the tooth fairy.  Or maybe she does, but she does not think a single tooth fairy flies around the world and trades money for every lost tooth.  Instead, she thinks regular people do this, and report back to the tooth fairy. Each tooth trader covers a certain region; for example, there is one for Egypt, one for the East Coast, and one for Oregon.  Also, you can't trick the tooth fairy.  Ida once put a fake tooth under her pillow but the tooth fairy wasn't tricked at all and Ida did not get any money.

 

Well, dear readers, as the Oregon representative of the Tooth Fairy, I have to stop here and trade some money for a top tooth.   

 

More to come on the Oregon Coast, Willowbrook theater productions, swim lessons, Arthur's fart book and summer in general...