Just A Note. . .

Joe's kindergarten class is learning how to write sentences, spelling the words phonetically if need be, and using their "spaceman stick" (finger) to ensure they leave the proper spacing between words.  This effort has paved the way for an exciting development here at White House: Joe can now write notes!  He presented the first to Julie Friday morning while she was curling her hair.  (He made a copy of it; he is also quite taken with the printer-copier-scanner's ability to copy things.)  Since then, he has written two other notes (which he hung on the door of Julie and Ted's bedroom) and, as this reporter files this dispatch, he is busy writing words for (Charlotte's) web since he and Clara are playing spiders.

We feel compelled to add a note about Joe's last note.  Julie spent a fair amount of time figuring out what it said because the very first word and the last word before "Love Joe" were difficult to make out, even when wearing the phonetic spelling hat.  She finally realized that the word preceding "Love Joe" was yelling and, crestfallen, immediately resolved to be ever more vigilant about staying calm when feeling anything but calm.  So you see, Julie assumed the note was addressed to her, not Ted.  As it turns out, it was meant for Ted.  We share this other story lest you think, Dearest Readers, that Ted is the only one ever to lose it around here.

Translation: I [heart] Mommy you make me smile

Mommy you make me smile when skies are gray you are my sunshine Love Joe

Daddy remember you need to work on your yelling Love Joe

This Bunny Is All Tied Up

Fans, we have been holding out on you. Our Hero has reached another milestone on the way to self-sufficiency: he has been wearing shoes with laces, and--now, he has learned to tie them all by himself. Turns out, when you get to be a shoe size 10, selection is vastly reduced if you don't consider shoes with laces in your mix of possibilities. So shortly before Halloween, Joe got some new pumped up kicks--with laces.

We taught the bunny-goes-around-the-tree method of tying, rather than the make-two-bunny-ears method, largely because neither of us ever used the make-two-bunny-ears method. Joe caught on to all of it pretty well until the last bit when the bunny has looped the tree and now must go through the hole.  That is tricky.  But on Friday morning, Ted texted Juie that Our Hero had done it!

That night at dinner, Joe said what he likes to do is "the penguin goes around the egg and into the snow."  He informed us that was fiction, because it wasn't real. If it was real, it would be non-fiction. Uh-huh.

Fans, what we have reported here is all non-fiction.

Our Hero Reads

In other reading news, we can report that now that the bambini are routinely bathing or showering separately (Clara usually prefers a bath and Joe, a shower), Joe usually amuses himself while he waits either for the bathroom to be available, or Julie or Ted to be available for reading, by reading in his room.  Tonight, Ted arrived home from a city council meeting about the sidewalk completion proposal here in the Vista to find Joe combining two of his favorite things: being naked, and reading.  Joe was naked--and spread-eagled--on his bed reading the first in the Mercy Watson series while the tub was filling.  We don't have the a photograph, Fans.  You have to use your imaginations.

Birdie "Reads"

Lately, after being tucked in, Clara can be seen, and heard, reading to "her friends": Tink, Ariel, Bupha, Fluffy, and Wilbur.  Wilbur is usually front and center on her lap since she (Birdie's Wilbur is a girl) is quite a bit smaller than the rest of the gang.  Sometimes, she doesn't even let herself be tucked in.  She just takes the books that were just read to her and announces, "I going to read to my friends," at which point it is clear that Julie or Ted is dismissed.  Then, she "reads."  Tonight, she read If You Give a Pig a Pancake to her pig (that's Wilbur).

Pay attention, Wilbur.

"It's true.  My lips are a little chapped.  That's what happens to the fair skinned in the winter whose Aquaphor ointment is kept up high in their cubby."

Juice

Sunday evening, Joe said the kid's camera Aunt Kate gave him a few years ago needed more "apple juice."  But not to worry, he knew where the cord was and could handle it.