Our State Fair is the Best State Fair. . .

Don't miss it, don't even be late!

Rest assured, Fans, we did not miss the Great Minnesota Get Together, and we were not even late.  Sunday morning found us at the fair not long after the gates had opened.  We were making our way to the animal barns, a route which took us past the Giant Slide.  We dismissed the Giant Slide out of hand in past years because neither Ted nor Julie had ever gone down it before, so not even nostalgia was demanding that they slide down rolling waves on a piece of burlap from 150 feet in the air.  This year, however, we stopped to consider it, and then, we did it.  It's two dollars a rider, no matter their age.  Neither Joe nor Clara was old enough to ride solo, so Ted and Joe rode down together and Julie and Clara rode down together.  Julie's tummy almost instantly jumped into her throat.  You fly pretty fast down this thing!  Clara started giggling about halfway down and the first words out of her mouth after we'd coasted to a stop at the bottom were "Let's do it again!"  After Joe emerged from his slide-induced happy stupefaction, he also wanted to go again.  But we did not.  We save it for another year.  Besides, we had animals to visit.

First up were the chickens because, you know, there's nothing like visiting the roosters at what might as well be the crack of dawn.  (In a word: loud.)  We also visited the sheep, horse, cow, and pig barns.  After the animal barns, we made our way across the fairgrounds, eating as we went, to the John Deere tent where Joe and Clara climbed all over the equipment, including a $242,000 tractor.  Joe was disappointed that all of the vehicles seemed to be missing keys.

We managed to keep Clara awake on the ride home and she took a nearly four hour nap in the afternoon.  Joe has his big boy rep to maintain so did not not nap, but fell asleep in the midst of Stuart Little (as Stuart is heading off in a boat in the Central Park pond and the air is thick with nautical fog!) and did not even rouse as he was carried in to bed.

After the Giant Slide.

That's actually a turkey.

It takes approximately 385 squirts of milk to make a gallon.

Ted visited the oink booth, too.  He just didn't get ears.

Birdie reunited with John Deere.

"How do I turn it on?"

Climb Every Playground

The other week, we arrived at the KinderCare to collect the bambini, to be told that Clara had not been a good listener.  She had, apparently, broke from the pack on the way in from outside, and torn about the big kid playground.  Here, we pause to explain the the outdoor play area is divided in two, with the little kid area featuring a play house and some push-a-long bikes, and the big kid area featuring a full out jungle gym, a play house, and tricycles.  Clara apparently was made to hold the hem of Ms. Manisha's shirt all the way inside which she did not like.  Wild horses can't be broken, Brigade.  Who's with us?

This morning found us at Wolfe Park following Joe's haircut and frankly, it's abundantly clear why Clara made a break for the big kid playground at school the other week ago: she tears it up on the playground.  See these ladder things?

She climbed both of them like it weren't no thing!  She zips around things like a little. . .something.  She's so surefooted and completely graceful.  It's really something to see.

 

A First (But Not the One We Were Expecting)

Brigade, you will no doubt recall that we were going to promote Birdie to a Big Girl Bed this weekend.  That was before Julie remembered that she had to attend an event for work Saturday evening that began at 7pm.  Julie couldn't imagine missing putting Clara to bed in her Big Girl Bed for the first time, so we have postponed the big event until next weekend.

But Julie missed a big event anyway!  Tonight, Ted read to Joe from a chapter book: Stuart Little, which we checked out from the library this (rainy) afternoon.  Ted reports that he read the first three chapters of it to Joe.  Julie takes a small measure of comfort from the fact that Stuart Little is not a book she remembers with special fondness from her own childhood, and from the fact that as tied as her parents are to her memories of reading, she recalls her first chapter book being read to her by a teacher (Miss Crawford, second grade, Beezus and Ramona).  Even so, Julie is pretty excited to pick up tomorrow night with chapter four.

It is also worth mentioning in this missive that while we were at the library this afternoon, a young girl made Joe and Clara's acquaintance.  She was perhaps seven or eight, and as such, seemed extraordinarily worldly to Joe, especially.  An older woman!  It was amusing to see her march up to the bambini in the children's play area, where there is a large toy house, ask if she could play with them, and then promptly take charge: "I know what we'll do.  Here, you take this one [a doll], and she can have this one [another doll--you get the idea], and then I'll take this one." Later, she had the dolls hide so Joe could find them which meant she had Joe turning around and closing his eyes so she could hide the dolls.  Clara was less entranced by this older siren.  Birdie danced off to find, as it turned out, little pencils of the sort that float about at golf courses and public libraries.  She was ferrying them over one at a time to Julie who was counting them as Birdie passed them over.  The Siren by this time had moved on to the Lincoln Logs at the table and muttered under her breath, "She'll probably bring you however many there are."  The Siren was quite something, and it was quite something to see her cast her spell over our young man.

More Visitors From Seattle

The girls, by nickname, from left: Birdie, Jules, and Care.

Seattle is where, apparently, plenty of the cool kids live.  Didn't you know, Fans?  Yesterday, Julie's friend Carrie, whom Julie met in law school, was in town with her husband, Paul, and their sons, Wyatt (who is four) and Gavin (who is two).  Carrie looked, impossibly, fresh as a daisy, despite the flight from Seattle to Minni-apples--with two toddlers in tow, no less--and Wyatt and Gavin were sporting super, super cool Star Wars shirts, apparently from Nordstrom.  (They do live in Seattle.)  Paul still has hair that rivals Dr. McDreamy's though does anyone watch Gray's Anatomy anymore--even in Seattle?  (Probably especially not in Seattle.)

They came to dinner.  We had "fancy" mac 'n' cheese, salad, and grapes.  We learned that Joe still does not like fancy mac 'n' cheese (Seriously?  Seriously.) and that Wyatt is not fond of an onion.  And so we here use "we" loosely above when we write that "we" had fancy mac 'n' cheese.  We learned everyone in this crowd likes a grape, though!

Not long after dinner, the kids were playing companionably in the living room which made Julie's heart smile, remembering Joe's reticence getting out of the car and heading into the house earlier in the evening.  Ted took the bus home last night so he could preheat the oven and slide the fancy mac in it, and Julie arrived home with the kids later, not long after Carrie and her gang had already arrived.  Joe was a little apprehensive about going into the house to see friends he didn't remember ever meeting after all.

It was in that moment that scenes from the filmstrip of Julie and Carrie's friendship ran and flickered through Julie's heart, that she thought--however briefly--of the people Joe and Clara would meet that would fill them up with laughter and light.  That's how she knew to reach down, grab Joe's hand and introduce him to some of the truest wisdom the Muppets ever gave us all: "There's not a word yet for old friends who've just met."

Joe and Wyatt.  (Wyatt had Legos.)

The Crib's Last Hurrah

On this same pajama walk, we were discussing Clara's impending movement to a Big Girl Bed or, rather, Joe was expounding upon the rules associated with big beds (listen here and accept our sincere apologies for the nausea-inducing camera work).  As it turns out, the lesson was presented at a good time, though recent events suggest that Clara might not have had her listening ears on this past Saturday morning.

We've read the advice about not moving one's child from his or her crib until an escape has been successful, but if this were the only time a child was moved from his or her crib, Joe would probably still be in one.  He is (clearly--to state the obvious) a rule follower.  We figured with Clara, though, that it was only a matter of time before she was breaking out.

We were right.  Turns out, last night was the night.  The volume had ratcheted up several, gleeful decibels when suddenly, it went even higher, but was decidedly not gleeful.  Clara had managed to pitch herself up and over the front rail of her crib and learned that the floor was further away than she thought.  She fell down, as she told us, and it was plain that it had scared her, bless her little Birdie heart.  Her reaction, in turn, frightened Joe, bless his little heart.  Wails abounded, but through her wails, Clara managed to sob, "I want to go back in!  I want to go back in!"  So we put her back in, covered everyone back up, and that was that.  But this is it for the crib.  It's its* last hurrah.

*Ha!--how often does that happen, Fans?!  It's its!