Abby’s school celebrated the first 100 days of school with a party. Each student had to get a shirt and glue 100 items to it and wear it to school. It was a perfect opportunity to fire up the ghetto studio and get a few pics of Abby wearing her creation.

Abby had her first spelling test and, as you can see, she aced it. We hope this is a good omen.

Abby finally got her loose top tooth to come out. That makes two lost. She was the second kid in her class to lose a tooth since school started. Some weird intrigue went on in her head as all this played out last night. She went to bed about 8 and, because we’ve been cracking down on her going to sleep as soon as possible, we didn’t hear from her for a long time. Finally about 10:30 she called out that she needed to go to the bathroom. Gina gets up and sees her to the bathroom and back to bed. Cut to this morning and she wakes up and declares her tooth free of the gum shackles that had imprisoned it for about 4 and a half years. There’s blood all over part of her sheet. After a long interrogation about just when she pulled the tooth, it turns out she had pulled the thing before she even got up to go to the bathroom. She didn’t tell Gina about it, she said, because she didn’t want us to be mad that she pulled her tooth instead of going to sleep. She also said she wanted to make sure the tooth fairy didn’t know about it until she could spend some time playing with the tooth. She said the tooth fairy came in her room in the night but she held the tooth tight in her fist and the tooth fairy couldn’t see between her fingers to where the tooth was. The tooth fairy left soon after.

It’s Abby Monday. She’s about to lose a top tooth and starting to look a little snaggley, kinda like Jewel.

Gymnastics is the new activity at our house. And Gymkata is the best martial arts movie ever made.

(Two SB600s for the rim lights. One AB800 in an umbrella for the front fill. SB26 for the splash of blue on the poorly done background.)

Abby and I were looking for something to do inside out of the heat that didn’t involve watching TV, so we decided to get into the movie making bidness. We decided to give Pixar a run for their money by making a stop motion animation short as our first project. We needed a camera dolly, so I strapped my camera to the top of Abby’s Barbie VW Beetle. I positioned the camera for each shot and took care of the focusing. Abby moved the train between frames and pushed the camera’s shutter button. She also helped solve the problem of keeping the train positioned on the bridge approaches without rolling backward or forward. We’re thinking of doing a frame-for-frame homage to “Citizen Kane” for our next effort.

It took about three months, but Abby finally worked one of her baby teeth out of her head. She was very excited. She just about flipped when the Tooth Fairy brought five $1 bills and six quarters. “I didn’t know she would bring me all of these coins,” she said.

Abby’s first dance recital was on Sunday. It’s amazing because she dissolved into tears during the makeshift practice recital back in December and vowed to not participate in the June recital. Well she did and she did great. The video is from Saturday’s dress rehearsal because no one was allowed to take photos or videos of the real thing.

Abby’s Aunts Jodie and Laney got her a tee ball set for her birthday. She proved to be surprisingly adept at hitting the ball. However, Jodie and Gramps proved less adept at fielding.

We just wrapped up three birthday celebrations over the last two weeks. The other day I said to her “I wish you were 1-year-old again” and she replied, “Daddy, I’m 5. I’ll never be 1 again.”