Lunch With Joe

As those of Our Devoted Readers who have dined with the bambini may know, Our Birdie eats rather slowly and deliberately.  Julie learned today that Birdie is going to be in for a rude awakening in a little over a year when she heads to kindergarten.

Not long after the school year began, Joe asked Julie if she would come and eat lunch with him in the cafeteria.  Julie said that if it was alright with Mrs. D, she would for sure before the end of the year.  Parents can in fact join their children for lunch in the cafeteria, and so today, Julie surprised Joe as he was walking into the cafeteria and thus saw how lunch time goes down.

It's LOUD.  Wow.  Topics of discussion included favorite animals (Julie was made to guess them by Campbell, Audrey, Nora, Aaron, and another girl and boy whose names she doesn't remember, but their favorite animals were dinosaur and shark, respectively), second favorite animals, favorite berries, how many whistles call in Mrs. D's class from the playground (two), and the fact that Campbell's little sister calls an iPhone an Elmo Phone.  This last was widely considered hilarious by all who heard it under the age of seven.

Fans, it's also short.  You get 20 minutes to eat with, mercifully, a warning when five minutes are left.  Julie also learned that most--maybe all--of the kids who bring lunch from home also bring a drink.  Joe seems to be the only kid in that contingent who buys milk.  About half the kids brought their lunch from home today; and the other half bought it.  Birdie is probably for sure going to have to bring her lunch--and with a drink--so she can bypass the line because she is going to have to book it to a table and get to the business of eating because you really have to pound your food.  It's sort of stressful.

Joe held Julie's hand though.  And bought her a chocolate milk.  The lunch tables were sort of turned.

Mother's Day Love

On Mother's Day, the bambini presented Julie with Heart Palace.  It was Joe's brainchild.  He had asked Ted to save the box in which one of the new deck chairs arrived, and then enlisted Ted's help in cutting out three windows and a door--with a handle!  (This feature was highlighted.)  The flaps at the top became a retractable sky light.  It's pretty posh--sort of a pied a terre.  It is in the garage, which seems to run counter to the old location, location, location mantra, but then, it's quiet out there.  Ted and Clara both helped decorate the palace with hearts (of course).  Initially, the Heart Palace said "No girls allowed" on its side, but Joe saw the wisdom in crossing it out when Julie pointed out that Heart Palace's intended resident was, in fact, a girl.  ("Oh yeah!")

But Julie's Mother's Day feteing really began on Friday, the moment she arrived home, when the bambini presented her with the Mother's Day projects they'd made in school.  The projects are pictured below.  Clara would have you know that she wrote all the words on hers "without the dots"--meaning she did not follow dots to make the letters.  Her lower case ds look like lower case bs (lower case gs are similarly troublesome) and she's used "kid writing" (as did Joe) so translations are provided below the pictures.  But no love is lost in them, Fans.  Julie's heart nearly burst when she saw that both bambini had written to her things she says to both of them--that she loves them to infinity and back, and that they are always in her heart.  True and true.  And she does like salad, and yellow, and going to the beach, and visiting her friends.  So she felt well and truly seen, and loved.

Happy Mother's Day

Things I Know About Mom
1. My mom's favorite food is. . .salad
2. My mom's favorite color is. . .yellow
3. My mom always says. . .we go to the beach
4. My mom likes to. . .read books with me
5. I know my mom loves me because. . .she is always in my heart

"It's like a bouquet."

My mom's name is. . .Julie
I love my mom because. . .she is nice
My mom and I like to. . .play tag
My mom's favorite thing to do is. . .visit her friends
My mom is special because. . .she loves me to infinity and back (Joe was very proud to have denoted infinity with the symbol)

Tooth Watch, Day 2

The big news around the White House is that Our Hero has a loose tooth.  It's legit, Fans! He's laid claim to one before but that's only because plenty of teeth in the heads of his fellow kindergarteners have fallen out, and their names posted on the classroom wall as a result.  It's the a bottom, middle front tooth--the one on the left as you look at him.  He discovered it Friday morning when he took a bite of bagel* and, as Our Hero put it, "it hurted him."  We shall keep you posted as to developments.

*Currently pronounced like a Minnesotan: "bag-ul."  What?  The boy also often calls dinner, supper.  We're thinking of having bay-guls for dinner.

Of Mail and Mothers

On Monday, Julie posted a package to Grandma Connie for Mother's Day. She did this early in the morning, before the post office was open, using one of those post-it-yourself machines in the post office's lobby.  Our Fans who have used them before will know that you put in the zip code of your mail's destination, and the machine spits out a label with the town, state, and zip code on it, which you are meant to affix to your package (obviously) and complete with the rest of the mailing address (again, obviously).

Perhaps you already see where this is going, Fans.

Julie got her label, slapped it on the box, handed it to someone called forth from the back by a buzzer (the package drop door was stuck), tossed her receipt in a garbage can in the lobby, and went on her way. When she set down her bag at work, her eye fell on the Sharpie marker she'd put in it to finish addressing Grandma Connie's package, and realized that she hadn't finished addressing Grandma Connie's package. The one with the one-of-a-kind and irreplaceable plate with Clara's handprint turned into a bird in its center. (Fans who've been to the Raleigh House or the White House will recognize in this description the plates Julie has been making since the bambini were wee bambini, and some Fans might know that Grandma Connie has a weekends for all things ceramic.)

Julie wasn't feeling well (she perhaps ought to have stayed at home that day), and she was posting all sorts of things--a pair of pants going back to Gap, photo mailers to the great aunts and Grandma Connie and Grandpa Charles, thank you notes for birthday gifts given to Clara. . .She was distracted, in other words, but still.  For the love of all things holy, Fans.

People like to rail against the US Postal Service. Julie has never been one of those people.  She, in fact, has always been a huge, huge US Postal Service Fan. You pay practically nothing and they ferry letters from home to home, post cards to campers, magazines! Birthday cards! Holiday cards! Valentines! Wedding invitations, birth announcements. . .and that's just the fun stuff. And, she's lived on walking delivery routes the past two years. In Minnesota, how many days is walking to deliver the mail a
pleasant task? She's got nothin' but respect for the USPS.  So she was hoping karma would mean her package would somehow make it to Grandma Connie.

To help karma out though, she called the post office.  They did not pick up.  (We can only assume they were too busy delivering mail.)  So she went by the post office on her way home, made like a suspicious person and dug through the trash for the receipt she'd tossed--which she found!--with the tracking number on it and then explained to the postal workers the whole mess she'd made in her distracted haste. She admitted to the absence of a return address. Return addresses?! Who needs 'em when you've got the sticker with the tracking number????? They kindly told her that her package had "left for downtown" at 1pm, but they would try "to catch it." They made no promises! Well, sure. But that's o-kay! They didn't laugh (in her face anyway). But when Julie didn't hear anything by the close of business the next day, she called Grandma Connie and said, "So! Funny story. . ."

Grandma Connie laughed, and told Julie to text her the tracking number.  Grandma Connie figured it couldn't hurt to go down to the Lake Forest post office the next day to see what she could find out, which she did.

Fans, that was when Mae (May?), of the Lake Forest post office, told Grandma Connie that the package was in Elk Grove Village, and would be delivered to the Lake Forest post office later that day--!!!!! (Mae delivered a lecture about the dangers of trying to do things while distracted and although it seems to us that circumstances were largely making that point better than Mae ever could, and that Mae's lecture was somewhat misdirected--Grandma Connie but an innocent, intended package recipient--we still mostly understand why Mae felt compelled to preach from the post office soap box.) Grandma Connie left Mae with her phone numbers and address (Mae made a copy of Grandma Connie's driver's license), and then left to do a few other things, intending to come back a bit later, but while she was out and about, Mae called Grandma Connie to say the package had arrived and was being dispatched to Grandma Connie's house--which it then was--!!!!!  Can you believe that, Fans?!?! It reached Grandma Connie sans full mailing address!!!!! At her full mailing address!!!!!

And then very next day, two be-stickered packages with books and tee-shirts and sticky hands arrived for the bambini, having a been posted by Grandma Connie and Grandpa--cleverly with the requisite full mailing address--likely the same day Julie failed to do the same on her package.

And on Friday, another box from Grandma Connie and Grandpa Charles arrived, this time for Julie, and containing a musical Mother's Day card (swiftly appropriated by the bambini) and some of her favorite fancy, overpriced-but-so-great! lotion--or body creme, as fancy, overpriced-but-so-great! lotion tends to go by.

Mail! The US Postal Service! Ceramics! Body creme! Mothers. Lovely things, all.  (Also return addresses.  Not to mentioning mailing addresses.)

Clara's shiner is from when she fell out of bed in the middle of the night a week or so ago.  (Too many princesses in the bed?)

Joe can read the notes that come with packages all by himself now.

Sticky hand.

Birdie, Live at the Chipotle

Birdie Brigade, we have told you before of Birdie's tendency to sing instead of talk, to dance instead of walk. Life is a musical, and she is, if not the star, then at least a member of the chorus.  Of course, her favorite soundtrack to all things right now is one of three songs in particular from Frozen: Let It Go, Do You Want To Build a Snowman, and Love Is an Open Door.  Brigade, she knows all the words to all these songs. (Sometimes, Let It Go is requested by the lyrics "snow glows white on the mountain tonight.") One of her most favorite things to do is to swirl in circles and make wide arcs outside as she sings Let It Go. Julie was amused last weekend when out with Clara at the paint-your-own ceramics place, Paint Your Plate, Clara suddenly stopped, paint brush in midair, like an animal that's caught the scent of something, and Julie realized it was because the gaggle of girls in the back at a birthday party were singing Let It Go. It seemed clear that Clara  died bating if she should go join in. Surely these were her people!

Later that day, we were at a real musical, Shrek The Musical, at the Minneapolis Children's Theater courtesy of Grandma Connie and Grandpa Charles. It was terrific, as their productions always are, and after the show, we went to Chipotle for dinner. Clara staged her own show--limited engagement, you know--after she'd eaten, which you can see here. There wasn't wild applause at its conclusion, but the audience was all smiles.