Shakin' Their Things on a Saturday Afternoon

"Nah nah nah nah NAH!!!!!"

This picture is representative of our Saturday afternoon.  Let's just say that Joe went to the McDonald's drive-thru in his underwear.  We perhaps need go no further, but we will.

After Birdie went down for her nap, Ted headed outside to paint the garage door and the window box that hangs on the side of the garage, and Julie went upstairs to patter and read.  She ended up reading on the big bed, which is where she was when she heard the pitter patter of little feet dashing all about downstairs before padding up the stairs and then suddenly, there Our Hero was, stripped down to only his underwear.  He burst out with, "Can we go to McDonald's for a shake?????" and frankly, Fans, it was all just too hilarious and charming to refuse.  Julie is a fan of the cheap, everyday, or pick-me-up treat anyway.  It wasn't long before she realized that Joe was covered in hunter green paint, the result of his help with painting the window box.  While he helped, he apparently chanted, "Paintin' in my underwear, paintin' in my underwear."  When Joe asked, at the car door, if he had to put on clothes, Julie said "Well, we're not getting out of the car."  You only go around once, Fans, right?

Once Julie and Joe got home, they sat out on the front walk and drank their shakes while Ted finished scraping the railing by the steps midway up the walk.  (We're on a home improvement tear, it's true.) 

"I'm Lovin' It!"

After a bit, Joe announced that we'd be working hard and was going to take a nap.  No, he didn't need help putting what remained of his shake in the fridge.

Three minutes later, he was back, giving new meaning to the phrase "power nap."  Joe consulted with Ted on the railing--or looked like he was anyway from the stoop where this reporter sat.

Consulting

Mostly though, Our Hero rolled about in the grass.  He allowed that Julie could as well, but noted that she really needed to do it in her underwear, and her shoes (by now Joe had donned his "cozy Crocs," which is what the winter Crocs have been dubbed).  Julie demurred.  Oh Joe also went around with the handheld vacuum, "hair blowing" various things, including Julie's hair when she had it bowed over her Nook.  (The distinction between the vacuum and the hair dryer was impressed upon him.)

Hair Drying

Eventually, Clara woke up.  The way she ended up in her underwear was hearing Joe asked to be sprayed with the hose and deciding right then and there that she was not about to be left out of that fun. But first, Julie hauled Joe and Clara off on an Underwear Wagon Ride.  Yes, we are nothing if not classy here at Raleigh House.  After the wagon ride, the underwear came off and the hose came out.  (So did our neighbor!  Boy did she get an eyeful!  But she offered us some lettuce from her garden and has put up with Berenice going ape every time she comes out to her house to throw something on the grill, so all signs point to her being nonplussed by the fine pair of bottoms she saw.)

Eventually, the mosquitos started coming out so the bambini were herded inside to the porch, where they quickly got into the winter gear bins.  Nothing compliments underwear like a pair of Princess Leia-esque ear muffs or a full gator.

"Help me Obi Wan Kenobi.  You're my only hope."

That's the blood pressure cuff from the doctor's kit he's holding.

Needless to say, the bambini were filthy after their adventures and also exhausted.  They were put to bed at 6:53pm, and Joe was asleep by 7pm when Julie went in to extinguish whatever plot to pitch a fit for God knows how long Clara was hatching.  Clara fell asleep not long after, too, but then woke a bit before ten.  That's unusual so Julie went in, and Clara said, "Cover.  Me.  Up!!!!!"  Well!  So Julie did, and by the time she had, Clara was back asleep.

Color Me Bigger

Clara, for her part, has really got the colors nailed down, save brown and black, which aren't in heavy rotation in your children's literature, and red and green which she mixes up, just like Joe used to do!  Last night, she picked out this book called Counting Colors to read.  Counting Colors is a color themed seek-and-find counting book.  So, for example, the green page might have one green lizard, two green frogs, three green toy boats, four tractors, and so on, all jumbled together.  Julie asked Clara what color each page was, and after Clara had pointed out about six things on each page, would then deign to respond.  Yellow is still "lel-low" (this was her first color), and blue is "loo!"  (Loo always seems to have an exclamation mark after it.)  White was a color she had pretty early on after yellow, which always surprised Julie at least, but then, there is a lot of white out there in the world, so maybe it's not too surprising.

We also discovered, while reading this book last night, that Clara has some sense of the relative size of things, and how to talk about those sizes, because on the red page, after Julie had asked Clara where the red shoes were, Clara busied herself finding strawberries, and identified one as "bigger" that the last at which she pointed--and it was!

Kind of like our little girl getting bigger every day.

To the End of the Counting, and Beyond!

The Hair Cut Game is back, Fans, or at least it was last night.  We'll see if it is back for an extended engagement tonight.  As a reminder, in the Hair Cut Game, one does not cut hair, or pretend to anyway.  Instead, one pretends to wash all manner of hilarious things from one's fellow player's hair--e.g. a monkey eating a pancake, or 50 purple popsicles.  As it turns out, last night Julie had a horse in her hair, but Joe quickly amended it to horses, "to the end of the counting."  "To the end of the counting" is one of the new concepts with which he is toying.  We've told him that the word for "the end of the counting" is infinity, and made reference to it being like when Buzz Lightyear says, "To infinity, and beyond!" but apparently, Buzz might as well say "To the end of the counting, and beyond!" so far as Joe is concerned, because there's no end to "the end of the counting."  But this is an example of the precious verbal gymnastics Joe (and soon enough Clara, we suppose!) engages in as he tries to express what he's thinking with the words he's got, and it really is just too sweet.  It's fleeting, too, of course.  We remember when he was saying geeses, and now it's goose and geese.  He's sorting out the verb tenses, too, and using them with more fluency.  It's only a matter of time before infinity is adopted, and he's beyond "the end of the counting."

Ready, Set, Tantrum!

Ted is back from California!  Clara Jane treated him to an extra special tantrum this morning.  Welcome home, Daddy!  It all began when Clara was not permitted to wipe her own bottom with the toddler wipes.  Now Bird Nation, before you all start thinking, "What's the harm in that?!" we would tell you that Clara loves--LOVES--to pull her a wipe out of a container, or a tissue out of a box.  Tissues aren't terribly pricey so we've sacrificed a box or two, but toddler wipes area bit more dear.  More than that though, tissues won't stop up the trash, but a handful of toddler wipes will sure stop up the potty (and as our longtime Fans know, we've only got the one here at Raleigh House).  Curiously, Clara is not so very into unrolling the toilet paper.  Rather, she prefers to tear off about a quarter of one square with which to wipe.  Or, she likes to tear off  a few squares, but wad them up into a tight little ball before wiping with it.  Who knows what she's thinking?  But we know you can't tell her anything.  This penchant is Reason Number 89 Why We Wash Hands After Using the Potty.

So there Clara was, wailing away on the potty, and--bare bottomed--off the potty in the kitchen by Julie's feet as Julie did the dishes.  We would like to say that she'd been wiped at this point, over her vociferous protests.  So we were just waiting for her to simmer down before getting her dressed for the day.  Eventually, she did, and said her signature line ("I ready."), but she wasn't really: she meant she was ready to go back to the potty and be given another go at the previously identified as Mommy-Daddy-only toddler wipes.  Hooray!  Round two!  Round two featured, oddly (given how Clara likes to roll--ha ha!--with her toilet paper), a length of toilet paper which was manhandled with passion in the kitchen at Julie's feet by the wailing Birdie.

In time, Birdie really was ready, so she isn't still tearing about in her pajama shirt and nothing else.

Happy Father's Day

***Special to California Dreamin' from Missing You in Minnesota***

So it was, as Joe would say, "Happy Father's Day" on Sunday, and Ted said that he did, indeed, have a happy Father's Day, which is good because he makes his family happy every day.  It is therefore with some dismay that this reporter regrets to admit that Ted made his own breakfast!  Mercifully, he requested eggs, bacon, and English muffins, and Julie prides herself on her scrambled eggs, at least, so she was set to do it.  But as the eggs broke, if you will, Ted made breakfast as he always does.*  He did no other cooking that day though, and Julie made him a buckle, or "summer cake" as we've taken to calling it around here.  We otherwise pattered about the day doing mostly a whole lot of nothing.

We should also say that the bambini made Ted Happy Father's Day cards at school.  Joe's included two Hershey's kisses: one "striped," and one traditional.  Guess who kept very close tabs on those kisses?  Eventually, they were unwrapped, and shared, with Ted taking the striped, and Joe the traditional.  Later Joe said that next time, he'd really like the striped.  Maybe on Happy Fabulous Son Day.

*See also: makes his family happy every day.