Snail, (Missing) Teeth, Hair

Three days ago, after a daily rainstorm, Emily found a snail in the driveway. We were heading out somewhere, which is pretty much the only time I go outside on summer days. She said, "Look, Mommy, I found a snail." I probably said something like, "That's nice, Emily. Get in the car." My parents were arriving at the same time, dropping off something or picking up Penny or something I can't rememember, so I must have decided to make a pretense of interest by walking back to where she was standing. I asked if there was a live snail inside, and she turned it over to look.

Not only was there a live snail in the standard size snail shell (maybe an inch in diameter--seems to be standard around here, at least in my highly unscientific survey), there was also a tiny, tiny snail perched on the flesh part of the bigger snail. Here is a very bad picture: minimal ability to focus and zoom in the Canon PowerShot, apparently, or I didn't know which setting to use. At least you get an idea of size, though. This was after we put it down in the mulch and leaves. (The little snail is just to the right of the big snail.)

Needless to say, much excited conversation about baby and mommy snails followed in the ensuing car ride to wherever we were going. We looked up snails once before when we found one while raking leaves, and I was pretty sure snails' reproduction was unusual. It is. So there's really no explanation for why the baby snail was sitting on the adult snail or any reason to assume the adult was the mommy (or more correctly, parent). Pretty cool, though.

And a week ago, somewhere in the middle of the car ride home from North Carolina, Emily said, "I think my tooth is getting looser." Again, a nonchalant response from me. She lost her first tooth at breakfast (eating an apple) about four months ago, which was pretty early (age 4 1/2) and we made a big deal of it. This second one had been loose since shortly after that. Every once in a while she'd say, It's looser and I'd wiggle it. At any rate, right after that statement in the car, she took a bite of her apple and then handed me the tooth. I had to put it in my wallet.

Today, I finally took a picture of it. You can see the one that fell out in the spring has almost been replaced by its adult tooth.

You can also see her hair cut, so cute, and what a relief for me. The battles over combing out the snarls, ponytail or no pony tail, screaming and running away (mostly her): all in the past.

Penny also got a trim to get the bangs out of her eyes. This series shows her making her silly "cheese" face and then deciding she didn't want her picture taken after all by well-timing her foot right as the camera flashed. And finally, a natural smile.

Or maybe she's practicing her soccer kicks. She walks around with that little (badly-needing-to-be-inflated) soccer ball saying, "My soccer ball" and last night, "Emily, come on, play soccer ball with me." Daddy's been watching the Olympics. Emily is going to play pee-wee soccer in September. Penny pays attention.