"About above across after against along among around..."

Edith popped out with her first preposition last night (other than the popular "in there" which she uses all the time as an adverbial phrase). We were headed down the stairs to go to the grocery store, and she said, "Edith go shopping wis Mommy Daddy." So cool! Of course, I also enjoy her current speech patterns--all the big words in more or less the right order, sans prepositions, articles, or conjunctions. I'll be a little sad to see this stage go.

Meanwhile I'm enjoying her attempts to use ever more complex sentences and convey ever more complicated concepts. Our conversations about what happened at daycare are particularly interesting. Yesterday the class celebrated Harrison's second birthday at snack time, shortly after which Harrison left to go pick up his grandparents at the airport. This made a big impression on Edith. When I asked her what had happened at school she told me,

"Heh-son go ehport see father see ehplanes. Edith go ehport buthday? See planes GO? Up down ground?"

Of course, we have to retain a dose of healthy skepticism about the reports from daycare, as I realized the other day. I was quizzing Edith about what she had done at school, and she came back readily with a report of doing "ahrt...paint...finguhs...pink." And reading "angwy book" at Circle Time (a book they have about handling negative emotions). I was so pleased, thinking how well Edith could now communicate to me how she had spent her day.

Then I looked at her daily gram from the teachers to discover, in fact, that they had done quilt collaging with scraps of fabric and read Here Comes a Bunny. Don't put this kid on the witness stand yet.

Sometimes her thoughts are so moving, though. The other day I was pushing her on the swings (a current obsession) and as usual, she tried to touch the sky. ("Almost...!") Then she pointed out, "Clouds."

"Yes," I said. "Today is a very cloudy day. There is no blue sky anywhere."

"YES, Mommy," she remonstratred me.

"Really?" I asked. "Show me. Where is the blue sky?"

"Blue sky odder side clouds," she said. My wise little cock-eyed optimist.

And since we're speaking of Rodgers and Hammerstein...we may have found the first album to give Peter and the Wolf a run for its money. It's a distant second as yet, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it climb the charts in the Boger-Lank household sometime soon. The other morning we were having jam and bread, which prompted me to start singing "Do, a deer." Then on impulse I popped The Sound of Music into the VCR, fast-forwarding to the parts featuring Maria and the children (and stopping before the end). Edith was absolutely riveted from the get-go, watching without moving for about an hour, asking me to play the puppet show sequence several times over. I know, what bad parenting on my part to introduce new TV without provocation. But really, The Sound of Music is such an American tradition. Edith's cousin had a Sound of Music party for her third birthday some years ago, and every year there is a sing-along showing of the movie at our local theater, costumes encouraged. Maybe Edith will be prepared to attend next year.

And now, a test of your knowledge of said classic. In a reference to one of her favorite parts of the movie, Edith calls both the movie and the CD, which we got out of the library, " 'ria bunny rabbit!" She calls many books by the name of the protagonist, so the Maria part makes sense, of course, but the bunny rabbit appellation threw me for awhile, until I figured out the source. Anyone? A drop of golden sun to the first person to come up with it.

Speaking of books and protagonists, I would like to be able to include a section in the sidebar of the blog featuring the titles and covers of books Edith is currently fond of. It would be a way of noting a big part of Edith's (and our) mental world at any given time, without making each post about books. It's a feature I would like to see on other children's blogs, too (hint hint), as a way of learning about new good books out there. But I lack the technical know-how to make it happen. If anyone can enlighten me, feel free to drop me an email.


This is a picture of my good friend Rebecca reading to Edith on a recent visit here. Edith was a big fan of "Becca Merz!" in no time and soon was approaching her with one book after another in hand. She knew a sympathetic librarian when she saw one.

Nevertheless, one of the most endearing recent developments on the literary front is that Edith has started "reading" to herself. All that repetition of favorite books has paid off. She still prefers being read to by an adult, of course, but when it's clear we won't or can't, she'll go stand at the rocking chair, lay a book out in front of her, and tell herself the story. I get such a thrill from overhearing how much she has memorized. It amazes me sometimes. Last night we were at Harrison's house, and she had me read her a short board book of Harrison's, one with which neither of us was familiar. She made me read it three times in a row without stopping. Then she stood up, carried it over to the Hacketts' rocking chair, and "read" it to herself flawlessly.

She's a little less flawless in her recitation of more complicated books, of course, but that only makes it the more intriguing, seeing which parts she has retained. In her Garrison Keillor book, Daddy's Girl (or as she calls it, Baby...Ha!), she was leafing through the part about Garrison Keillor dancing with his little girl at a wedding, in which he gets sentimental thinking ahead to his daughter's growing up. Edith came up with, "Baby, 'morrow go out see world."

And as this has become a string-of-linked-thoughts kind of post, let me do some advertising here, for those of you who are Garrison Keillor, NPR, or American folk music fans. Tom's cousin Ryan, a freshman in college, plays in a bluegrass band that he and friends put together in high school. Their band, the Powder Kegs, was just selected as one of the six finalist groups out of 500 entries in A Prairie Home Companion's Talented Twentysomethings music contest. They will appear on the show next Saturday night, April 21 at 6pm, when listeners will be asked to log onto the show's website and vote for which group should win the contest. So tune in to your local NPR station to hear the Powder Kegs and other great American music from young musicians...then help us stack the vote!