Adriana lost her first two teeth (finally)

On Wednesday, Nikolay pulled out Adriana's two front bottom teeth. These are her first two teeth that she has lost. On the second day of school, back in September, her first tooth started wiggling. At the time I told her, erroneously, that it takes abut six weeks for a tooth to come out after it gets wiggly. She really wanted to loose a tooth at school because her teacher gives the kids a special thing to put their tooth in, so for the past few weeks as we tried to wiggle her tooth at home she would not let us go so far as to actually pull it out, because it was her plan to pull it out at school the next day. Her grown-up teeth, behind both of her two front teeth actually started growing in, so maybe that is what took so long, because they weren't pushing the other ones out, just giving her a second row of shark teeth.
The next day another milestone occurred in our family--Alice lost her belly button scab (is there a better word for that?). The very next day she smiled at me for the first time, and even laughed a little. She is making more and more eye-contact now.
Ariel's latest news is that she gets to be Daisy Head Maisy in her class' readers' theater production. She is also busy learning her division facts and trying to walk on her hands, usually at the same time.
In Dallin's world: He asked me if I could buy him a purse, and I told him that only girls used purses, then he said, "OK, but me a Spiderman purse." I told him I would, if I saw one. A few days later the same thing happened with a Chinese fan. So if anyone sees a Spiderman purse or fan out there, let me know. I can't decide about Fur Berries. It started with Adriana wanting one for her birthday and then Ariel and Annika wanted them for Christmas, so Dallin feels left out. I told him they were only for girls, what do you think?
Yesterday when I asked him what he wants to be when he grows up, maybe an engineer like Papa, he said he wants to be a bird. A big red bird, with wings.
Annika wants to be a mom when she grows up. That was my goal too, so I thought it didn't really matter what I majored in, as long as I was interested in it. What a luxury, to go to college just for the fun of it, to be educated just for the noble virtues of being educated. I hope to steer her into a more practical department than Linguistics, so that if the situation arises where she would be working, she can earn enough to actually make it worth her time. When I was choosing a major I was naive enough to think that worrying about money was a shallow character flaw, and missed the whole practicality of it.

There are two quotes that I came across this week that I will be adding to my side bar. The first one I read in the Ensign. It was in an article by Kathleen H. Hughes entitled "Grow up unto the Lord," she asked, "Is the divine within us being nurtured, or do our actions prevent the Spirit from becoming the predominant force in our lives?" This really made me think about how I choose to react under stress, which I encounter a lot these days trying to meet the demands of my five kids.

The other quote comes from one of my all time favorite books, "The Little Prince"

“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret; it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

I need to remember this when I start to be judgemental and start forgetting why I really love people.