JCC Book Fair

This morning, the Birds met Connor and his mom Sara at the Jewish Community Center where Graham and Connor attend daycare for its book fair. (In the end, after a bit, the boys came, too.)

The other week, Julie watched Connor and his brother, Graham, in the hour before Connor's bedtime. Connor was sort of beside himself over this whole arrangement, especially when Julie told him they could go find Daddy, and then showed Connor a picture of his daddy. Connor is 20 months old so he didn't have words to say what he thought, but it was pretty clear: "Lady. That's a picture. Where's my dad? Or my mom. 'Cause you ain't either one. Where's G Man? G Man. This lady told me she was going to show me Daddy and she showed me a picture. Can you believe that? Don't go far, man."

Julie thinks she made progress today. Connor grabbed her leg twice. Clearly, he thought Julie was Sara when he did. But one of those times, he tried to play it cool and make like he did it on purpose, which meant he didn't immediately move away.

And, Julie brought Clara, who was kind of Connor's groupie (she's pretty easy on the eyes, too). The JCC is his turf, after all. Connor took off his shoes, so Birdie did, too. They did a little art (a little scribbling, a little stickering), looked at the books (Clara tried to impress Connor by trying to remove as many as possible from the shelves), pretended to listen briefly to the storytellers that were there, and visited various themed photo stations.

Joe got another balloon fishing pole which was enough to ensure that he had a good time. Clara got a monkey climbing a tree, but a part of the tree promptly popped, which was enough to make Julie unnecessarily panic about balloons generally, even before Clara put part of the balloon in her mouth, which is when Julie decided her nerves couldn't take it and took the balloon away, and Clara wailed and tried to climb over Julie's shoulder like the balloon monkey to get it back as they made their way through the parking lot to the car. (She's has to remember to get that monkey balloon out of the car before the bambini wake up in the morning and we head for school in it.)