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.