Beh-Bee

As we have reported, Clara has a few words down absolutely pat, among them, baby. Tonight, one of the books she selected to read was Dr. Seuss' ABCs*, in which the following rhyme accompanies the letter B: "Barber, baby, bubbles, and a bumble bee." For the rest of the book, Clara kept saying "beh-bee," and gently flipping back to that page. (Birdie Brigade, you can also, unfortunately, hear how rattle-y her breathing is in this video clip. You don't even have to turn it up.)

*Julie recently realized that she has the whole of this book memorized.

Socks

Joe can really and truly pretty much dress himself now. He sometimes needs help ascertaining which side of a garment is the front, and will often need help turning the "fuzzy side" of the sock out, but otherwise, he can manage the whole operation himself. The ability to put his own socks on with ease is relatively new, and he seems pretty taken with it. Similarly, Clara has recently figured out that clothes can be taken on and off--and that she can do it! So she likes to take off her hat, and her socks. Putting them back on is much trickier. All she knows about the putting on bit at this point is that it's tricky, tricky business. But she's always keeping tabs on Joe, and since he's often putting things on, she wants a piece of that action, too. This morning, Joe found one of Julie's clean socks waiting to be folded and was sporting it like a thigh high. Clara promptly found one of Joe's socks and wore it the same way. By this time, Joe had moved on to two socks of his own, but Clara didn't seem to mind.

And With Fall Comes. . .

The coming of fall brings lots of lovely things, but also: more colds. And Fans, wouldn't you know it? The Dynamic Duo already have their first! Clara has been hit hard. She was coughing last night, and woke in the early morning hours, and had to be whisked up to the Big Bed for the rest of the night. She can still sleep on to of Julie. She spills over like a glass that's too full, but it works (and Julie missed the Bird so much, she didn't mind).

By the morning, when Bird was a bit off her feed, we were worried that her ear may have become infected again. She got a clean bill of health this past Monday at the end of the second round of antibiotics, but we were reminded that fluid remains behind for a while. So we skipped what would have been our first music class, and took her and Our Hero in to see the doctor. The good news is that her ears are still infection free. The bad news is that there is now fluid behind both her eyes, and she's got a cold. In other words, conditions are ripe for infection. All things considered, her spirits aren't so awful, but she runs out of steam pretty fast.

Our Hero has just a touch of the same cold, or something similar. His right eye was pink so we were worried about pink eye. It wasn't pink eye. The doctor had a fancy name for it that seems to mean the-pink-and-watery-eyes-you-get-when-you-have-a-cold.

So we are sort of watching and waiting, and hoping that Clara's ears remain puppy and infection free, and Our Hero continues to keep the germs mostly at bay.

Homecoming

Fans, the best part of leaving, is the homecoming. Julie arrived home last night, and spied what she thought was a little blond head watching out the front window (there was a black furry one obscuring her view!). It was! And it started bobbing up and down as she got closer. But the porch door was locked! So Julie and Joe giggled at each other, and jumped up and down on opposite sides of the glass until Ted figured it out and came to let Julie in.

Julie's mom travelled as much as she does now when Julie was little. Julie doesn't know how her mom managed. When Grandma Connie came home in those days, she almost always had a surprise for Julie, and she would always say, "Close your eyes and hold out your hands," before placing the surprise in them. Julie had Joe do the same thing last night when she gave him the monkey.

Monkey

Today was Ted's last day of solo parenting and it was another success! I took Joe and Clara with me after pickup to get "Mommy Daddy dinner" which is our now Friday ritual take and bake pizza and 6 pack of beer - we are nothing if not sophisticated gourmands. I could have used an extra hand, but they charmed the beer guy out of a lollipop and Joe serenaded the Papa Murphy's customers with a foreign sounding version of ABCD while Clara walked in circles with her little bird hat just slightly askew.

The highlight of the day was clearly the arrival of Mommy just in time to read Joe books (Clara will get her moment in the morning). Joe immediately absconded with Julie's shiny big gold necklace, but that was nothing compared to the monkey doll that was presented to him. Monkey was soon given a funny voice and was dancing and doing many other tricks. So after a couple books and hugs, Joe took his monkey off to bed to be introduced to the rest of the zoo. Welcome home Mommy (and monkey)!