It's Mommy's Birthday!!!!!

Today began with Julie hearing Joe holler from his bed, "IT'S!  MOMMY'S!  BIRTHDAY!!!!!" shortly before he and Clara clattered upstairs.  They each made a few trips up and down the stairs to collect the cards they'd made as well as the one they'd bought (a monkey with enormous google eyes  on a head that one can pull up and down).  In case it's not visible in the picture, the card Joe made for Julie reads:
"What I Love About Mommy:
Make dinner for us
Snuggling with Mommy
Sing Happy Birthday
Mommy is really good at mopping and vacuuming"
(Fans, it's true: Julie is terribly good mopping and vacuuming.  May it never be forgotten.)  The card features a hippo that Ted outlined, Joe colored in himself, and then Joe outlined again in blue.

The morning was filled with the usual craziness including the discovery of a pool of pee in front of the toilet that had cascaded down the stool that is almost always in front of it as we were finally headed out the door to the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden to see how autumn is unfolding there.  The culprit remains unknown.  Also shrouded in mystery is the reason why the unknown culprit did not announce that an accident had occurred.

As they say, Fans, the days are long, but the years are short.  And as the song says, and many more. . .

Birdie In Chief | The Video

Brigade, when Julie arrived for pick-up, Ms. Manisha told her to sit down because she had something to show her, which turned out to be Birdie rockin' her way through all the presidents the class has learned.  You can watch Clara do it again here because Julie asked Birdie if she could tape Clara doing it, and Birdie said yes so Julie dashed out to the car for her phone.  Here is a cheat sheet of Clara's responses in case it is hard to hear:
Clinton
George Herbrt Bush (but "Walker Bush!" is more fun to say, as you will see)
Carter
Eisenhower ("holding glasses!")
Taft (who has a mustache, which is why she holds a finger up to her upper lip)
Wilson ("got glasses!")
Reagan
Jefferson
Kennedy
Taylor
Nixon (fist appearance; thus, likely not actually Nixon--probably Lincoln because you know, they were so similar in all aspects)
White House (extensive exchange about who can live in the White House)
Adams
Obama
Roosevelt
Coolidge
Bush ("Walker Bush!"; so shall he be known as evermore at Raleigh House)
Washington
Nixon
Washington monument
Lincoln memorial
Buchanan

Bird In Chief, An Addendum

This morning, at drop off, Ms. Manisha asked if we'd reveled in Birdie's display of presidential identification prowess.  We reassured her that indeed, we had.  That's when Ms. Manisha informed us that Clara is the only child in the class who can identify James Buchanan, and added that yesterday, they'd learned Dwight D. Eisenhower.  ("Not tower!  EisenHOWER.  Glasses!"  This from Clara and the other early-arrivers.)  Today's daily doings report states that with today's lesson regarding Jimmy Carter, the class has now covered 20 presidents.  So we were so wrong, Brigade!  We are way beyond the Founding Fathers and the three most recent guys now.

An Idea Whose Time Has Maybe Come?

This morning, while snuggling before getting up, Joe said, "I know!  Let's have a stay-at-home pajama day!"  This comment remind us to report that of late, he's been delivering pronouncements of this ilk, replete with adult inflections and hand gestures.  Always, the suggestion is something completely outlandish and unworkable like, "We could maybe get a pet tiger!" or "I know!  We could maybe paint the house purple."  Always, the suggestion is delivered with a gesture like upraised palms and a shoulder shrug, like "I'm just spit balling here!  But I think I'm on to something. . ."  Of course, he really might be with this stay-at-home pajama day.

The Idea Man

Bird in Chief

We have been meaning to report that Clara and her Twos B compatriots have been learning to recognize some of our presidents: Washington, Lincoln, (Teddy) Roosevelt, Kennedy, Clinton, Bush, and Obama.  No doubt you will have discerned, Brigade, that for the most part, those presidents making the cut are those that are readily distinguishable on sight, or who have recently held the office, relatively speaking.  Now lest you think Ms. Manisha and Ms. Marjorie are neglecting your more typical pre-school concepts in favor of these less traditional topics, we would tell you that shapes are also a focus right now (and that Birdie nailed them all tonight in her shapes book for the first time ever).  But Ms. Manisha is all about the knowledge extensions and well, it is an election year after all.

Today's report of Clara's daily doings said: "Quiz on presidents resulted in a 3 way tie.  Clara finally won the tie by guessing two more presidents."  Bird Nation, we can believe it.  We neglected to report that the other week, when we were discussing, over dinner, things we'd learned at school, Clara informed Julie, in a tone that suggested Julie was a complete dope, that the president of these United States was Roosevelt.  She could not be dissuaded.  Obama?  He's some schmuck that lives in the White House, sure, but President?  Pshaw!  Birdie lives in the Yellow House so whatevs, O-bam-ah.  Also, Birdie Brigade, Birdie would have you know that it's not Bill Clinton; it's just "Clinton."  Hail to the Birdie, she's the one we all say hail to!

Presidential Historian

Stay Forever, For Just a Moment

Tonight marks the first night that one or both of the bambini haven't been coughing through the early part of their sleep--and, they aren't doped up with cough medicine.  Clara was asleep by the time Joe was tucked in--a relief given that she fell asleep on the way home from the apple orchard and thus took only a "nap" (read: didn't really nap at all) in her bed and was rather a havoc-wreaking dervish in the later half of the afternoon.  So Joe, who wasn't any more sleep than usual, was without his usual audience for the Late Late Show With Joe, which might be why, as Julie left, he said to her, "I want you to stay forever!  We can snuggle!"  Oh, Fans.  With such joys in one's life, one can feel a bit ashamed of not feeling them more, of instead despairing over disappointments and frustrations.  Somehow, Julie managed not to burst into tears as just then, she thought about how of late, she's been all too guilty of letting discouragement overwhelm delight, and she sank down next to Joe, for just a moment, into the light, as the evening fell.

Joe and Julie, August 2009.  Snuggling on the porch, with ice cream that Ted had just brought.  So Joe is about one month old in this picture.

Thumper Goes To Its Rest

In other news, we were just outside, readying the gardens for fall and winter a bit, which is how it happened that Julie came upon a long-dead animal in "the lilac garden," to the right of the front porch.  Julie will admit that there have been a few times in recent months that she has thought it smelled rather awful upon walking into the house, and you know, it perhaps says a lot about Raleigh House that she just sort of chalked that up to all of the small, often smelly things that live here: Berenice, Joe, and Birdie.  All lovable, all sometimes rank.

Conforming to traditional gender stereotypes, Julie marched herself right off to her Darling Husband and informed him that there was a dead animal by the lilac.  Implicit in this announcement was that it was his responsibility to dispose of it.  Julie picked  up a little over a handful of dead mice not long after we moved into Raleigh House, and so far as she's concerned, that's a debt that can never be repaid.

Sometimes we think that Joe might have hearing problems, but then there are moments that set you straight.  One of those moments followed Julie's pronouncement that there was a dead animal by the lilac.  Joe didn't quite hear dead animal, but her heard lilac.  Thus began a tough and incessant line of questioning.  Julie began by telling Joe that there was something smelly by the lilac.  "Was it a skunk?" No.  "But was it a skunk?"  No, still.  "It could be a skunk. . ."  Or not. . .  !!!!!

It was around this time that Julie had a stream of thoughts that went something like, "Well, we've talked about death before, and if they lived on a farm, they would know that it's all part of the circle of life."  Never mind the fact that we don't, in fact, live on a farm (and that Julie at least finds the late Elton John hits like Circle of Life kind of schmaltzy and annoying).

So mostly to curb the skunk line of questioning, she told Joe that there was a dead animal by the lilac, and sometimes, dead animals smell.  Joe quickly moved off the skunk line of questioning and musings, and onto the fact that something "had died," uttered with great glee to his sister.  "Maybe it got fired by a gun!"  No.  It was at this point that the bambini were marched into the garage toting the hoops that support the peonies, while Ted was actively clearing away the animal that HAD DIED!!!!!

On the way, and once n the garage, Joe's new question was what kind of animal had died--a skunk?  (It's back!  Yes!)  Julie said she didn't know, and here, we pause to note that besides late-career Elton John, another thing that annoys her is when she is asked a question, she answers that she doesn't know, and a follow-up question is asked.  For example:
Person: "Hey, what's the weather today?"
Julie: "I don't know."
Person: "Is it supposed to rain?"
Julie: "Ibid."

"Maybe it was a skunk. . ."  So it wasn't long before Julie said with much emphasis that she didn't know what kind of animal it was that had died, and that was all she had to say about it, period, the end.

That's when Ted walked by her and said quietly, "It was a rabbit."  (Not a skunk!)

Apple Time in Minni-Apples

"Sweet as an apple on Christmas Day."

Joe and Clara had a play date with Eli and Emma this morning, but it was such beautiful fall day here, we decided to meet them at a apple orchard.  We met them at an orchard we've been to for several years running now, but this is probably the first time we've been there when it's been such a lovely day because it's the first time we've been there when there were so many people there!  Despite what's suggested by this picture, we did not pick apples (we bought them), but we did have fall fun.

Slinky-Slimy Pajamas

Night-night!

After bedtime stories have wrapped, on her way into "take a nap," as Birdie says at nap time and nighttime, she often makes the rounds, dispensing a good night hug to Ted, Joe, and Berenice.  She always includes the Boo.  The "hug," in all cases, is really more of a lean in, with her head.  Here she is "hugging" Berenice last night in more new fall pajamas.  These pajamas represent our first foray into the pajama sets that feature a silky bottom.  The intersection of adult female intimate wear, if you will, and toddler girl sleepwear always unnerved Julie a bit, if you want to know the truth Fans, but yesterday, when the Birds were wandering around Kohl's picking up a few more pajama sets for Clara, Julie suddenly remembered how much she adored such pajamas when she was younger.  She called them "slinky-s" or "slimy-s."  She thought they were so floaty and beautiful--ethereal, had she known that word when she was, say, six.  Clara's first slinky-slimy isn't quite ethereal, but it is slinky-slimmy.

Seriously. . .

CUTE.

A Regular Ol' Dog Party

Just now, Fans, we heard Joe's voice come hurtling upstairs: "No I say it!"  To which we heard Clara reply, "No I say it!"  They say this to each other sometimes, back and forth.  They think it's hilarious.  Not long after, we heard Joe bellow, "Go around again!" which fans of Go, Dog. Go! will recognize along with what followed, a mash up of the book's concluding lines from Joe, at top volume: "To the tree!  To the tree! Up they go to the top of that tree!  What is up there on top of that tree?  A DOG PARTY!  Now do you like my hat?  I do!  I like that party hat!"  Next up was a rendition (again, bellowed) of The Itsy Bitsy Spider.  They are still at it, though they are no longer hollering at each other so it is hard to hear what they are saying, but no doubt, they are under the bed.  We have heard their little feet pounding around, and then not, and why be on one's bed when one can be underneath it?

Friday morning before school. . .

In the "piggy cave."

Friday Night Out

Today was Friday, and Pajama Day, at least at the KinderCare.  It was also an Eat Out At Chipotle Day!  On the way there, we reviewed what this meant.  Clara said, "LISTENING EARS!"  Yes.  Well done, Birdie!  Joe expounded: "Listening ears, and we have to do restaurant behavior, and eat all our lunch--dinner!"  (This last is something that we have found is made much of at the KinderCare--i.e. one cannot have seconds unless one has eaten all of firsts, if you will.)  As he was getting out of the car, Joe said he had listening ears on to the end of the numbers.  Well then!

So there we were in line, with our listening ears on.  The bambini were making like well behaved monkeys in their pajamas and Kangaroos kicks.  An older woman got in line behind us and smiled at them as they flittered around our feet and the stools off to the side.  That was before she realized they were coughing practically every other second.  We've all been a bit under the weather at Raleigh House this week.  We're through the worst of it, but Coughs McGoo and his erstwhile companion Coughs McGee will probably sound like they belong in a TB ward for another three weeks--you know how it goes, Fans.  We can only say that Joe coughed into his elbow 100% of the time, as taught, that Clara is learning to do the same, but that all the same, it was all slightly less charming to the older woman who was no doubt reminded of the fact that with the charming flittering about in pajamas comes a necessary comfort levels with decidedly less charming bodily functions for which no one is wistful.

On the way home, we were listening to the radio.  An announcer reported that there had been some rain in St. Louis Park and Minnetonka today, but not may other places.  That's when Joe piped up from the back that St. Louis Park was where we lived--!!!!!  Look who's in the Looky Loo!  Coughs McGoo.

Birdie at the Window

This is Birdie, this very morning, at the window in the peak over the porch.  It's not your every girl that can pull off yellow (or hearts on her her butt), but then, as has been written here before, Birdie is not your every girl.

Big Girl, Big Time Snuggler

Brigade, as you know, Clara, has been rockin' the Big Girl Bed for a few weeks now.  She has fallen out (once--the first night) and has discovered that she can get out of the bed (but not yet out of the room).  Some nights, Clara likes to get out bed after being tucked in (but before Joe has been tucked in) and distribute all of the animals that have been relegated to the animal basket because Julie has decided that 15 bazillion and one animals in residence on the bed might be just one too many.  The night before last, there were thumps and delighted shrieks emanating from behind the door after both bambini had been tucked in for the night.  Investigation revealed that Birdie was underneath Joe's bed with assorted animals.  We supposed that this was a kind of big brother ordered bunk bed arrangement because as he padded into bed, Joe had asked when we would be getting "beds like Jonathan's."  (Clara slunk out from under there and made a beeline for her bed without us saying anything.)  In other words, Birdie's makin' like a big girl now that she's in the Big Girl Bed.

But here is the best part of Clara now sleeping in a big girl bed: it is now possible to snuggle with Clara in her bed and Clara is, and has always been, a very good snuggler.  In the way that Joe is very much in his head, chasing whatever glimmering thought has flashed through it, Clara is just so much of her body, always in the moment, so warm, and so earthy.  Sometimes, when Julie lies down with Birdie in the morning, Clara will reach up a little hand and put it on Julie's cheek and murmur, "Mommy."  And if that wasn't enough to make you never want to get up and make the donuts, there is also that when you lie down next to Birdie, she scoots right in close or pulls you right down to her and just settles herself, like she'd be perfectly content to lie there all morning, too.

Who's Got Spirit? We've Got Spirit!

The powers that be at KinderCare anointed Friday Dress All in One Color Day.  Periodically, they come up with some themed "spirit days" that might sound fabulous in theory that are anything but in execution.  This actually isn't one of those spirit days.  This one doesn't even sound good in theory because if you think about it even for the length of time it takes to say "Dress All in One Color Day," you instantly realize how ridiculous it is going to be in execution.  Participation was understandably low when considering the center as a whole, but here at Raleigh House, it was high: 100%!  Joe was in orange, a statement color.  Even though it was warm that day, we have had a few cooler days that have called for socks and sneakers instead of sandals.  Joe is fond of a sock, and now that they are back on the table as a possibility some days, they are his default choice whether he is wearing long pants or not.  Hence, the statement socks Friday.  Clara was clad in navy, sort of a sad wannabe Janet Jackson Rhythm Nation look, and would not be left out of the socks action.  This Friday coming up is Pajama Day.   Thank goodness.

This Just In. . .

Fans!  It's been a big week here: we have a new potty seat.  That's right. And you thought you'd had a big week.  After seven years, we decided it was time.  So far, the bambini haven't remarked on it, which we really can't figure given the manner in which they treat everything that happens in the bathroom as worthy of an investigative report.

In other potty related news, these days, when Clara uses the potty to tinkle, she will sometimes cock her head, lift a finger to her ear, look at you and whisper, "I hear it."  Julie usually whispers back, "Me, too."  If Julie is tinkling and Clara is about (which, let's be frank, she often is because potty time is often not private time these days), Clara will regard Julie seriously until the dulcet tinkle begins and then Clara will point to her ear and whisper, "I hear it."

You heard it here first, Fans.

Another Occasion For Birthday Cake

As our long time Fans know, we Raleigh Housers are ourselves Fans--of cake.  In particular, we are fans of the cake that comes at least four times a year--i.e. the traditional Ekkers birthday cake: Duncan Hines classic yellow cake with strawberry jam between the layers and chocolate frosting.  As many of our Fans also know, today was an occasion for just such a cake.  Ted turned 37!  Besides eating birthday cake tonight, he got to open birthday presents this morning.

Ted made out pretty well, but next year promises to be even better.  We know because this morning Joe told Ted that next year, he would go out to the store with Mommy to get Ted a "stuffed animal friend" for Ted's birthday, you know, "to snuggle with."  Fans, we know.  Your heart just melts like a birthday cake candle!  We're just 364 days away from meeting this new stuffed animal friend, and from celebrating again the guy who makes every day seem like an occasion for birthday cake around here.

Fall Flowers

In the midst of Clara's Beasts class, the boys left to gather up the week's necessities at Target.  After class, because it was feeling like fall, and because they were caught up in the spirit of it all, Julie and Clara decided to head to the farm stand across the way for some mums for the pots out front.  Clara decided on purple and orange, of which Julie approved.  Then, the Birds headed home and Julie helped Clara plant them.  By the time the Birds were done, the boys were home and Julie took a few pictures of the bambini by the new fall flowers.

Here, Joe is aghast that he was been asked to make like he actually likes his sister (which he does).

The old switcheroo!  A classic tactic!  Now that Joe is in the spirit, Clara can't be bothered.  Um, like, she already smiled?!

Not bad.

Clara: "Dude.  What are we doing?" Joe: "We're 'smelling the flowers.'  Mommy is nuts, but let's just do this thing and get it over with."

Saturday Mornings Are For Learning!

Before swimming, ready to go

 Fans, if you would like to get yourself up and going, what you should do is schedule some swimming lessons for eight bells.  That's what we did, and, well, it's gonna be awesome all fall long.*  When one begins to be interested in swimming lessons for one's tot up here in the Land of 10,000 Lakes, one quickly learns that the gold standard is Foss--The Foss Swim School.  Now that we have been to one lesson, we get it.  Hence, the 8am lesson--classes are small and returning families register first, so the more reasonable times of 9am and 9:30am are not readily available to new families.

Foss runs a pretty slick operation.  There's a pool divided into nine sections and multiple, small classes of different levels go on at once.  It seems like it would be distracting, but the teachers in each section seem to move at such a quick clip and do goofy things like get a high five that (naturally) sends them reeling back into the water, that the kids don't really have time to be distracted.

Joe is in the "Littles 1" class with just two other kids.  His teacher's name is Jeanine.  From what Julie and Clara could tell from the observation room, the focus of the first lesson was kicking.  Joe was super into the kicking business.  Splashes abounded.  Teacher Jeanine also floated with each kid around the class's section twice.  Julie could see Joe's leg relax the second time around.

Poolside

The lesson is half an hour so before we knew it, it was over.  Birdie's Beasts class at The Little Gym is at nine, and Joe decided that he wanted to watch Clara like Clara had watched him.  He's like the big man on campus at The Little Gym.  He saw Teacher Kayla on the way in who hadn't realized Clara was his sister, and couldn't believe that he is four.  (Joe was in her class when he was two.)  The boys didn't stay for the whole 50 minute class, and Clara was a little sad when she discovered that they were gone, but she rallied for all the Little Gym fun.

Here are Birdie and Julie getting ready to sing the Beasts welcome song.  If Julie tries to shake the maraca before the song has begun, Clara will turn to her and say, "No!  Not yet!" 

*As Julie was typing this post, here is what she heard from downstairs: "Oh, Clara!  What are you doing?  Did you put Gorilla in the bowl?!  Now he's got flour all over him.  Don't put Gorilla in my batter."  This was met with laughter.

Paul!

Last night, Julie had lain down on the couch to read a few pages of her own book while she waited to read books to Clara who was getting into her pajamas with Ted.  Joe was a little wound up so Ted had banished to the living room to get into his own pajamas without getting distracted by his partner in crime, or get her more riled up.  So there was this little storm of brown fabric and floppy limbs spinning around on the floor as Julie read.  Once Joe emerged from his self-created hurricane of activity that is him donning clothing, he asked Julie what she was reading.  Julie flipped the book closed to show Joe the cover and said, "Winter Journal."  As it happens, the author's name (Paul Auster) is much larger than the title on the cover of this particular book and Joe asked what those words were.  Julie pointed to the letter P and asked Joe what it was.  After Joe identified it correctly, she said they would sound the rest out together and Fans, she'd just finished saying that when Joe said simply, "Paul!"  Like it weren't no thing! He doesn't even know a Paul!  (Save Wyatt and Gavin's dad in Seattle, but he's only seen that Paul twice in his whole life, and not his name spelled out.)  Julie laughed and Joe started spinning around and around and around on his hands and knees on the floor, laughing.  As he said to Ted, he read the whole thing through, all by himself.

Joe Goes to Pre-K

Fans.  Today was Joe's official first day in the pre-K room!  He's spent a few full days in there over the course of the summer, but was then still on the pre-B roster.  Not so anymore.  We are starin' down the barrel at kindergarten with our very own pre-kindergartner.  Can you believe it?  Neither can we.  Not hardly.

Things roll in the pre-K room pretty much the way they did in the pre-school rooms, in that units are still two weeks long with curriculum unified by those two-week themes, but there is more emphasis on the beginnings of reading and writing.  For example, in the pre-B room, Joe used to write his name each day by the door on a sheet.  Initially, his name was spelled out in dots.  From there he progressed to free-handing it and from there, to still free-handing it, but with an uppercase J and a lowercase o and e.  Now, he signs in on a dry erase board, and with his first and last name, as we read after the fact in our welcome packet.  Today, he signed only Joe.  But Fans, here was the bit that was almost to precious to bear: the first thing Joe did was draw a line and it wasn't the cross bar for the J to follow.  No, it was the blank line on which he wrote his name.

Incidentally, today was also Cousin Nick's first day of high school, and he came up on our way to school.  Clara remains in her "twos" room until she turns three, but today was the first day of her room's unit on families.  In anticipation, we reviewed our family members as we drove from home to school, including, of course, Cousin Nick.  Joe informed us that he "has a Nick."  His Cousin Nick "has two names.  Cousin and Nick."  Joe just calls him Nick.    Special to Two Names Cousin Nick: we were thinking of you today, and hope you had a great first day of what will be a great freshman year.

Reading True North

We finished E.B. White's Stuart Little last night, Fans.  Those of you familiar with the tale might recall that at its end, Stuart is motoring along in his little car when he is met by a fork in the road, beside which is resting a telephone repair man.  When Stuart stops to consider the fork, the two strike up a conversation about the relative merits of the four cardinal points.  They agree that a "person who is heading north is not making any mistake."  This put Julie in mind of North Toward Home, which Jane first gave her.  It's Willie Morris' account his coming of age in the forties, fifties and sixties, imagining his future as this country was remaking itself in those decades, and his pilgrimage, as one reviewer puts it, from the Deep South to the North, which Morris comes to call, of course, home.

Julie finds that one of the greatest joys to come from reading, is the rush of affinity one's heart sometimes feels for the author, even as one's mind cautions against ascribing too much intent and purpose to the author's prose.  Last night though, it was hard not to ride the heart's swell, as she read the last lines of Stuart Little, thinking about all the people and places that she labels home, her journey to here and now, and all the accidents and choices that have marked that journey, some--all?--of which brought her to be reading that particular story, on that particular night, to that particular boy, her son, while his dad made dinner in the kitchen and his sister waited up for him in their room.  Intellectually, one knows that there is so much chance in a life (and can even admit that there is some comfort in that notion, especially when one has been dealt a blow), but somehow, this recognition stands side by side with what seems equally certain: that this life, was meant to be.  Of course it was.  It could be no other way.  It is hard to hold both of these truths.  So says the mind.  But the heart knows different, right?  It's easy to hold it all there.  As easy as holding the little boy, and the little girl, who are just starting out on their way--north, south, east, west.

Stuart does head north and the reader is told that "As [Stuart] peered ahead into the great land stretched before him, the way seemed long.  But the sky was bright, and he somehow felt he was headed in the right direction."

We picked up a new chapter book yesterday and don't worry, Fans: it's Beverly Cleary's The Mouse and the Motorcycle, so it's not likely to send Julie off on some metaphysical musing the way Stuart Little did here.

E-I-E-I-O!!!!!

Here is another video clip of the scenery on our way home (this time from Noodles following a trip to the Minnesota Zoo) that was shot for the audio of Clara singing Old McDonald Had a Farm without her noticing and putting a damper on the sing along.  (We have been trying to capture her E-I-O-ing for some time now.)  Though, as you will see, Joe could accomplish nothing surreptitiously, and it was, apparently, most decidedly, not a sing along or, rather, only Joe and Clara were invited to the hoedown.

Got Conversation?

Meanwhile, conversations with Birdie these days, go a little something like this:

Julie and Clara are sitting at the table eating chocolate yogurt for breakfast.
Clara [to Julie]: Got chocolate?
Julie: I do have chocolate. [beat]  Do you have chocolate?
Clara [brightly, clearly delighted her conversational sally has been a success!]: I do! [beat] Joe got chocolate?!
Julie [smiling]: Yes, yes he does.

Scene.

Why, why, why?!

Just about anything you say to Joe these days is met with "Why?"  Julie decided to turn the table on him last weekend and jotted his responses down on the napkin she was using as a bookmark in the book she'd been trying to read:

Julie: Joe, why are you four?
Joe: Because I am and because I had a birthday.

Julie: Why will you turn five next year?
Joe: Because I'm going to be in kindergarten.

Julie: Why is the grass green?
Joe: Because it needs grass seed.
Julie: Why?
Joe: Because it needs to be.

Here is where Julie stopped, but you see, of course, how it can all go on indefinitely, though it would appear that the use of circular logic might offer an escape hatch from the madness, if one's conversational partner isn't familiar with the charge, or isn't willing to level it.

Big Girl Nest

Sleeping Beauty

In other firsts, we can report that Birdie is, at this moment, asleep in her big-girl-just-like-Joe!-bed.  !!!!! We've been talking about it off and on for about two weeks.  Last night, when walked of the bambini's room after tucking them in to Joe's launching into a primer about big beds.  He began by telling Clara that when you sleep in a big bed, you can't fall out.  True enough, Fans, true enough.  So far, with about four hours in the big girl bed logged, she hasn't fallen out.  This might actually be saying something given that there's no rail on the bed, and at least during her nap, she was kind of all over it the way she was in the crib.  When she was tucked in tonight, she started with her head on the pillow, curled up on her side with Pink Dog.  But, by the time we came back in to tuck Joe in, she'd shimmied down to make room for the rest of the menagerie on her pillow which wreathed her head like a halo.  So the big girl bed was taken very much in stride by our big girl and tomorrow morning, maybe we'll all pile like puppies on to her bed!

Putting the big girl bed together, with very helpful helpers.

Little Bird in the Big Bed

Birdie the Beast

This morning Birdie went to her first Little Gym class.  The parent-child class sequence is: Bugs, Birds (!), Beasts, Super Beats.  Clara may be Our Bird, but she was never a Little Gym Bird.  Her inaugural class was a Beast class and Brigade, she tore it up!  She was a true beast!  When we arrived, a Birds class was finishing up so Clara stood with her face pressed to the glass windows, looking into the gym at all of it.   That was when Julie heard, "Hey. . .I know you!" and turned around to find her friend Nell and her son Jackson waiting for the Beasts class to begin, too!  Hooray!

When Teacher Katie opened the door and the Birds were out, Our Birdie marched right in and plopped herself down on the red mat and waited for all the fun to begin.  She watched everything Teacher Katie did, and did everything Teacher Katie said to do.  Teacher Katie, at least for today, was the bomb.  Birdie marched, ran, galloped, and jumped in a circle.  She especially loved running.  She pulls one knee up super high when marching, but hasn't yet mastered the whole left-left-left-right-left-military-marching-drill drill.  She does actually jump once in a while, but hasn't really realized that she's done it, so mostly her jumping looks like a deep knee bend.

No class for tots is complete without a parachute activity.  A favorite is to ask all the kids to sit in its middle, while the big people hold its edges and turn it.  This activity was always sure to make Clara burst into tears before, but today, she went right to the middle and sat down when Teacher Katie asked.  Clara looked back at Julie like, "Um, Teacher Katie said to sit in the middle.  Where are your listening ears?"  But then the parachute started spinning, and Julie watched Clara's face light up like a sparkler.  She loved sitting in the middle and being twirled, for the first time ever.

Birdie also loved exploring all of the equipment in the gym.  She held Julie's hand and marched herself along the high balance beam, and especially loved the uneven bars.  She grabbed on the the low one several times and swung herself off. No flies on Birdie.  She can fly!  Brigade, if you could see her, your hearts would feel like they were flying, too.