"Mama, don't let your babies grow up to be..."

What kind of a person ignores advice from Willie Nelson? But Edith has had her heart set on being a cowboy for at least a month, ever since seeing a video in which Spot the dog dressed up as a cowboy for a costume party. Like Willie's song suggests, I don't think she had any idea at first what being a cowboy was actually about. (And don't call her a cowgirl either--the first person to do that received a baleful stare.) The whole concept started to become clearer once we got some books out of the library and received a nifty cowboy outfit in the mail from Mor-mor. The horse was a last-minute addition, found at a thrift sale two weeks ago for $4, which seemed better than the going rate for horses, so we took advantage. If I were true to the artistry of my costuming-wizard mother and grandmother, I'd have stuffed a pair of Edith's jeans and boots with Polyfil and attached them to the horse at the saddle to complete the trompe l'oeil effect. Alas, as Tom observed, "Your efforts at artistry are going into your dissertation right now. Don't worry--I'm sure someone will read it." If not as many people as attend the daycare Halloween parade.

Marching as Older Toddlers in this year's parade, Edith and her classmates were finally of an age not to cry when their parents appeared suddenly in the middle of the school day. Every kid in her class had parents in attendance, and we all circled the neighborhood together.

Thomas the Tank Engine, a pirate, a giraffe, and another cowboy. Kennan, who is from Texas, is the real deal.


Together they tamed the West

The Older Toddler Class. Front row: Zeke the giraffe, Youssef the dalmatian, Sarah the monkey, Harry the pirate, Joshua-Thomas the Tank Engine. Second row: Kenan the cowboy, Jon-Gabriel Superman, Hannah the ladybug, Edie the cowboy/girl, Torrey-Thomas the Tank Engine, Ms. Monika the Bat. Third row: Ms. Alice the Bug, Ms. Bela the Bug.

After all that parading, the class was happy to munch on Halloween treats.

Edith's teachers were more than generous in sending the kids home with non-candy treats, including copies of two Halloween books they've enjoyed at school this week.

Edith was in a hurry to get home for the rest of the evening's festivities.

We lit the pumpkins we'd carved this weekend. She decreed that one of them should be happy and the other, scared. She named the big one Torrey and the little one Harry.

In the early evening we hung out across the street with our neighbors, including Minnie Mouse, and enjoyed a cookout.

The spirit of autumn was in attendance, too.

This year Edith and Harry tried their hand at trick-or-treating for the first time. Edith didn't know what it was all about, but as she watched the bigger kids come by, she liked my explanation that it was a chance to go visit the neighbors, show them her costume, and say "Trick or treat!" She wanted to give it a try. She was surprised and delighted when the first neighbor we visited gave her a pack of Smarties. Her thank-you was heartfelt. She didn't want to put the Smarties in her trick-or-treat bag but instead just held onto them "very tight." When at the next building they let her choose anything she wanted from one of three candy bowls, she was even more astonished. Grabbing a lollipop, she dropped her Smarties. The rest of the evening she walked around the neighborhood talking to people and sucking her lone lollipop, happy as a clam.

One final word of cowhand advice: If your evening's grub includes peanut butter and jelly, be sure to climb down out of the saddle to enjoy it. Otherwise, your trusty companion's mane may be plastered to the saddlehorn until the next rain.

JuJu glee

Yesterday we visited our friends, Brian and Laura, and their daughter, Julia, at their home in Hoboken. Julia is six months younger than Edith, which used to make them seem at completely different life stages. This weekend for the first time, at almost 2 and almost 2.5, they seemed like peers.

Edith must have sensed this would be the case, because she was excited all morning about going to see Julia. Through breakfast and getting dressed she kept asking what Julia was doing at her house, hoping I would say that she was eagerly anticipating our visit.

When the girls finally saw each other, Edith just beamed. She repeated to me everything that Julia said. When they jumped in Julia's crib, she kept giving Julia tackle hugs. Too bad they don't live in the same town: It seems clear that they would get along fabulously.

Peekaboo still delights

"Hear ye, hear ye!"

Visiting the venerable namesake of the "Ducky Park." Psst...If Julia is big on ducky parks, be sure to take her to visit Boston Common someday.

JuJu teaches Edith to play the blues

Daddies and daughters

Edith adamantly didn't want to leave. She fell asleep in the car on the way back to Princeton, but when we pulled up in front of our house, she opened her eyes, looked around, closed her eyes, and announced, "I'm NOT at my house! I'm still at Julia's!"

Last year's fall outing with Julia was to the pumpkin patch. We did that on our own this year on Sunday.

E is for elephant, D is for dumb parents

Edith headed off today with two flags for "F" day in show-and-share, the gay pride rainbow flag and the United Nations flag. I confess I get a certain pleasure out of the fact that those continue to be her favorites.

Last week she brought in her Edith puzzle, and Harrison brought in a toy elephant, which prompted sufficient interest among the children that they have embarked on a whole elephant study this week. Trying to reinforce at home what they learn in school, I noticed a copy of Dumbo that we had inherited sitting on top of the TV last night and asked Edith if she'd like to watch some of it.

Now give me some credit. I remember Dumbo and am aware it's a heart-wrenchingly sad story. I can hardly bear to watch it at 31. How could the writers fail to reunite Dumbo and his mother at the end??

My plan was simply to show Edith the opening sequences: the stork bringing babies to all the circus animals, the animals loading onto the circus train to start the circus season, the "Casey, Jr." song, and the stork arriving on the train, a little belatedly, with Mrs. Jumbo's baby. I was going to wait until Mrs. Jumbo unwrapped the package and saw her little baby and all the elephants in the car cooed over him, then stop the tape right before the other elephants started mocking his all-too-African ears.

I didn't realize Edith would be able to read the mood of the movie from the get-go. All it took was three seconds watching Mrs. Jumbo scanning the skies for her bundle from the stork, which was late in coming, and Edith's lip began to tremble. "Where's the mommy elephant's baby?" she asked anxiously. I assured her it was coming.

No good. She watched the animals all get on the train, Mrs. Jumbo the only one without a baby yet, and she broke into aching sobs. Tom and I had never seen her that kind of distraught. It was clearly one of those moments of lost innocence, a stunned recognition that the world can be deeply, terrifyingly SAD.

Edith was sobbing and panicked. She asked over and over for the mommy and baby elephant to be together. We fast-forwarded to the part where Dumbo arrives. But the frames actually tend to show one or the other of them at a time; only for a very few seconds are they actually pictured in the same frame. Edith kept asking plaintively, "Where's the mommy? Where's the baby?" depending on who was on the screen.

We wound up fast-forwarding through the movie trying to find any moment that would reassure her that mommy and baby were together. There's only, of course, that wretched scene in which Mrs. Jumbo is locked up and pokes her trunk out through the bars to rock the little elephant she can't even see. Needless to say, that hardly did the trick.

Boy, what an error in judgment. Edith brought home a headband she'd made in school with an elephant trunk and ears on it. I feel like I ought to be the one to wear it. Just call me Dumbo.

Hop, skip,...

I forgot to mention an important milestone reached last weekend: Edith has learned how to jump. The NBA won't be calling anytime soon, but with a sufficiently precise instrument, you now could indeed confirm the appearance of space between the ground and her feet on most attempts. She's delighted and can frequently be found practicing her new skill, complete with "boing! boing!" sound effects.

Anarchist in training

A few days ago, Edith asked me, "What are governments?"

Surprised, I tried to explain in terms she could understand. She listened carefully, then announced,

"Mommy, I don't need any more governments from you!"

I'm not sure we can credit her with perfect comprehension. She continues to ask and to announce that she doesn't need any more governments. She seems to find this vaguely funny.

I rather think she has the impression the governments are similar to peppermints.

Meanwhile someone seems to have introduced her to Candide, because she also frequently can be heard muttering something about "the best of all possible worlds," to her parents' mystification.

The hills are still alive

Not many people realize how closely our suburban New Jersey neighborhood resembles the Alps. But if you are perceptive enough, you'll observe that those rises you might take for the edge of a drainage ditch or the slope of a fairway on the golf course are in fact, exalted peaks. Once you recognize them as such, you won't be surprised to come across a small blond nun spinning around with her arms outstretched, belting, "The hills are alive with the sound of music!" A few more lines and she'll cock her head, exclaim that she hears bells, and dash away helter skelter for the abbey. Seventeen times in a row.

Yes, Miss 'Ria still features prominently in our household. Edith has most of the soundtrack down by now and has an unerring knack for pulling out lines that, coming from her two year old mouth, are inevitably cheeky.

"You're always late for everything, except for every meal," she told me today as we hurried into the house from the playground to get dinner started.

Later at the dinner table she refused the sweet potatoes on her plate, then sang under her breath, "And all those children, heaven bless them, they will look up to me and mind me."

I need to get some tips from Julie Andrews.

The interpretation of dreams

My most prominent impression of my niece, Abigail, is her incredible love for imaginative play. For several years she loved nothing better than to recruit adults to take roles in the elaborate scenes she had created, often based on books or recent experiences. We were patients at her hospital, March sisters in Little Women, or sea creatures in the ocean. A few minor props and she could transform herself into another being and the living room into another world. For her third birthday we were members of the VonTrapp family in Austria; the next year, when Abigail's mother had a newborn infant to care for, Tom and I had the challenge of organizing a fourth birthday party around a combined Ingalls-Alcott-Grimms theme. Abigail is in first grade now and quieter about asking adults to play along, but I suspect her imagination is as rich as ever.

Now Edith seems to be moving into the void. Her pretend play is taking off, and she seeks to take her parents and any other willing parties along with her. Only so far, her imaginary scenarios remain rather mysterious to an outsider, taking on the surreal character of a dream world. As in a classic anxiety dream, the games have seemingly arbitrary rules that you are supposed to understand but don't, leading to mild panic: Stand on that line in the sidewalk...no THAT line. Now the Person in Charge stands on this line at a perfectly perpendicular angle to you...then suddenly turns in a circle and demands that you say "2 schoolbuses." You say 2 schoolbuses, only be told, "No, 4 schoolbuses. Now say 4 schoolbuses, then I say 4 schoolbuses." So you say 4 schoolbuses, but instead of repeating the line, the Person in Charge says "1 schoolbus" and laughs like crazy.

Other times the pretend play is more in the nature of acting out a scene, one that starts out recognizable enough but slowly morphs in ways that you only dimly realize are bizarre. On a dog walk the other day, Edith picked up a rock and announced it was a wolf. She set it down on the path, picked up a smaller rock, announced it was a bird, and put it close to the first rock, explaining that it was circling the wolf's head. I realized we were in Peter and the Wolfland and was immediately on top of things. Except not. She picked up a rock for a duck and a rock for a cat and placed them. Then she picked up a stick and announced it was the gate to grandfather's garden. Only as she put it down, it suddenly became someone or something squeezing under the gate, rather than the gate itself. Then it seemed that Bismarck was the wolf and Edith was Peter, and we were chasing the wolf, trying to bring him into the garden. Then I learned that Edith saw two wolves, not one, and that they had been in her classroom at school on Sunday...

Things were a little more recognizable last night at 7:30, when I pulled up at home at the end of a long day. I got out of my car to be greeted by a small voice somewhere in the trees, "We're at the zoo! Come see the wolf!" Edith-Peter and Daddy-Hunter had apparently paraded Bismarck-Wolf to the zoo and were now enjoying themselves there, feeding the animals. I fed some tigers and hippos, once they were pointed out to me. Ironically, Edith's games seem to assume a more rational dimension in dark than in daylight.

Pouring Mommy some tea on the sidewalk

October photo update

First practice with scissors. Difficult enough to furrow her brow. Absorbing enough that she kept at it for twenty minutes.

A sunny morning on the playground with Desi's mom. Also perhaps the only day yet this fall that it was conceivably cool enough to wear the new sweatshirt Dad got her. Though night comes early, we're still in shorts and the trees are largely still green. I begin to suspect the fall season is a thing of the past in the mid-Atlantic. Where have all the red leaves gone, long time passing?

Another Sunday, another family baptism. This time it was Santiago's big day, and all the cousins were able to be together for the celebration. Edith now remains the only lost soul in the bunch.

A connoisseur of playgrounds, Santiago checked out this piece of climbing equipment for its viability as a lounge chair. Or as he put it, he was pretending to be Pappy.

Not to be mocked, Pappy took some hostages. (Note the dominance of the thin straight hair gene in the youngest generation.)

There are also some great pictures of Edith's class learning about mail, but I don't know how to capture them from the Adobe format in which they were sent to me and upload them here. Stay tuned...

The scattered musings of a dissertating mother on her break

The other night Edith erupted with a wild set of mishmashed consonants and vowels at the dinner table.

"What was that?" I asked.

"Spanish."

***

This morning we were hunting around for something that started with D to bring in for show-and-share. Edith emerged from my room hopefully holding up a tampon.

I had to explain that her instincts were right but that the initial consonant in that case is actually exploded, not voiced.

Wait, her instincts weren't right...?

***

We are going to have to start working on the important art of accepting declarations of affection gracefully.

Harrison has been eager to spend time with Edith after school this week. Apparently he was bereft when she didn't appear on the playground one afternoon. Then last night we promised to come play after dinner only to get sidetracked by a telephone call. By the time I was done talking, it was too late to play. I called Campbell to let her know. A minute later she called back. I could hear crying in the background.

"This is a bit strange," she said, "but Harry was disappointed and wanted to talk to Edith, so we told him he could call her."

I put Edith on the telephone.

"I love you!" exclaimed Harrison.

"Thank you," said Edith, calmly picking her toe nails. Then she looked at me, smiled, and laughed. "Harry!" Then back into the phone. "Night night."

We're going to work on being a little less blase. A girl doesn't want to trample on the tender feelings of her best friend.