Odds and ends

I. Since I brought up the subject of clothes recently--and because I can't resist lists--I have to crow over my thrift sale triumph. At our church's fall thrift sale this week, I found Edith

-A red velvet Christmas dress in mint condition
-Two sweathsirts
-A polo shirt
-A purple T-shirt
-A pair of classic train-conducter-striped Oshkosh overalls
-Five pairs of shorts for next summer
-A sundress for next summer
-A pair of navy school shoes in the next size up that look new
-An Elmo counting book
-An awesome colors pop-up book
-A scratch-n-sniff book of common objects
-A book of photographs of common birds with a CD of their calls so she can catch up with Uncle Peter a bit, since she continues to love birds
-A hardcover original Garth William illustrated Little House on the Prairie in mint condition
-A hardcover edition of The Education of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N (hiya, Uncle Peter)
-A funny story about just why the cow jumped over the moon
-Two years worth of Babybug, a young toddler "magazine" of stories and poems and art, in board book format, by the people who make Cricket magazine for older children

plus a pair of brown work-worthy shoes for myself that I needed and a newborn outfit for a friend who is due any day

...for $9. Total.

After leaving the thrift sale I went to the yarn store, where I bought the supplies to make Edith a single hat...for $17. The hat is made and she won't suffer it to be put on her head.

I sincerely hope the lesson here isn't that I should swap knitting for bargain shopping as a hobby.

II. Edith's newest phrase is an enthusiastic, "Aw right!" It's surprising how encouraging it is to have one's actions cheered by a toddler.

III. Her favorite books have all changed since August. Go, Dog. Go! is out. (It was so 15 months.) The new favorites are more numerous and actually start to include some that are interesting for adults...at least, the first couple of times each day.

The most cherished is one her cousins gave her, Micawber by John Lithgow. I first pulled this one off her shelf to read to her for a number of reasons. Micawber is a squirrel, and she loves squirrels. The painted illustrations are very realistic and engaging, each filling a large page, which I guessed would make it easier for her to get into. And for my own sake, I liked it because it's a great New York City book. Micawber is a squirrel who lives in the top of the Central Park carousel and goes over to the Metropolitan Museum of Art every day to gaze at art from the roof, through the skylights. One day he sees a student artist at the museum copying one of the paintings. Thrilled to encounter a live artist for the first time, he sneaks home with her and in the middle of the night, uses her painting materials to try some painting himself. He does this for a whole summer, until he is able to open his own personal gallery in the top of the carousel for the other city animals. The story is told in poem form and is delightfully whimsical. How many children's books use the words viridian, beguiler, and peregrination?

But we never read the poem. Edith calls Micawber simply Doo-rul (squirrel--it sounds remarkably like doo-re-ul, or cereal) and all she wants to do is find the squirrel on every page. She has a homing device attached to the book, I'm sure, because she can find its thin red spine anywhere in the house and demand a reading at the drop of a hat. As I'm not as fond of finding doo-ruls as I am of a poem about an artistic Manhattanite, I'm afraid I no longer have the rosy feelings I did about this book when Edith first latched onto it.

But she does have two books with narratives that she'll listen to now, which is a big change. The first is Harriet, You'll Drive Me Wild!, by the same author-illustrator team that did Everywhere Babies, which I love. Edith never liked Everywhere Babies, so I was surprised and delighted when she latched onto Harriet after one reading. I can't imagine what she finds compelling about it: It's about an irrepressible, messy little toddler named Harriet, who wears red Keds. She has a dog and a mother with straight blond hair who wears jeans and T-shirts. Throughout the day, Harriet keeps making messes, though she doesn't mean to. It happens, "just like that." Harriet is always very sorry. Harriet's mother doesn't like to yell, so she tries speaking calmly with Harriet as they clean up each mess. But her calm responses get more strained, and finally, when Harriet and the dog rip open a feather pillow during naptime, Harriet's mother loses it and yells. And yells and yells. Harriet cries. (Note: This is Edith's favorite part. Schadenfreude?) Then her mother calms down, hugs Harriet, apologizes, says she shouldn't have yelled, but that sometimes it happens, "just like that." And they clean up the mess together.

Of course Edith wouldn't know anything about spilling Cheerios and jam, or getting paint on the rug, or pulling a place setting off the table. She doesn't have a piggy bank just like Harriet's, or projects from daycare hanging on her wall, or a bookshelf full of books next to her wooden dresser with the round knob handles. And her mother never gets tied up with boring things like paying the bills or drinking her coffee. And of course, her mother never yells. I have no idea why Edith likes the book, really.

The other book is the wonderfully quirky Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, a catchy poem that keeps changing rhythm, so that at first you think it's one of the thousands of poorly scribed pieces out there that pass as poetry in the land of children's books, until you find that it's in your head for the rest of the day and that the twists and turns are what makes it so compelling. The poem is about the lowercase letters of the alphabet all deciding, in turn, to climb a coconut tree...until the tree bends so far from their weight that with the arrival of x, y, and z all the letters coming crashing to the ground. They get banged up in the fall ("...skinned-knee d, and stubbed-toe e, and patched-up f..." and of course, "black-eyed p"), but they all climb the tree again. Edith loves the crash, as well as the part where the uppercase letters, "mamas and papas and uncles and aunts," come to "hug their little dears and dust their pants." Me, too.

III. The alphabet is the hot ticket in town these days. In addition to Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, Edith's favorite song, which she'll start singing at any moment, is "Now I now I A-B-B..." Hey, you know her pronunciation--who needs 26 letters?

Her favorite letters currently are O, S, and X. Beantown residents may make of that what you will.

For Amy, who I just learned is reading this blog.