We don’t seem to track milestones in Ben’s development so much these days. Some time recently we noticed that he can read silently now (which means Eli doesn’t get so many bedtime stories read by his big brother any more), but the days of noting — and recording– the first step, the first jump. . . those days are long past. (He’s playing basketball now, but we’re not holding our breaths for the first slam dunk.)

But today we had a good one to note: he lost his first tooth! Exactly 5 years, 5 months, and 2 days (thank goodness for baby books) after we noticed his first baby tooth, it fell out of his mouth, the casualty of a big bite of dried mango. It’d been hanging on for a couple weeks now, the adult tooth coming up behind, rather than pushing up from below, so he doesn’t even have much of a gap. This strikes us as quite true to form: our Ben doesn’t do anything without being well and truly prepared.

Above: the first tooth, with a Joe’s O for scale