A big day and little doings

When we went around the room sharing bits about our day this evening, Edith told us that she'd had a "pretty big day." First, she had been chosen to lead the pledge of allegiance. She doesn't actually know the pledge of allegiance beyond "...the United States of America," but that doesn't seem to matter.

Next, she had been the first to spot one of the class's "sight words" in the daily message from Mrs. Hammel on the board, and she got to use the see-through fly swatter to swat it, then draw a circle around it. Thanks to Edith, the whole class was alerted to the presence of is in the morning message. "And that was the longest sight word anyone spotted, too. The others were...a and I. But is is a whole letter longer."

Finally, she screwed up the courage to slide down the pole on the playground. In the past, she explained, she'd watched other kids do it and thought she wanted to try. But then she'd get to the top, put her hands on the pole, and be too scared to wrap her feet around it and drop. However, today she was talking to "a girl who seems kind of nice and I like to talk to her--her name is Kayla, I think," when Kayla went down the pole. Edith knew that if she wanted to continue her conversation, she'd have to follow Kayla or be separated from her. So down she went. And she liked it!

"So you can see, it was a pretty big day for me."

May we all always appreciate the joy of such ordinary big days.

Meanwhile Alice didn't trumpet the fact herself, but Tom considered it a big event that she "peeped and pooped" in the potty. Otherwise, she and Tom enjoyed their usual routine: drop Mommy at work (opening the back window so Mommy can lean in and kiss Alice in her carseat), then do errands (a favorite new word of Alice's), go to a playground, and go hiking before an afternoon nap.

Alice has gotten rather short-changed with all the kindergarten excitement on this blog, so here are a few updates about her.

She currently enjoys announcing our ages, which she has memorized, even if she has no idea what she means:

"Ali one!"
"Edie five!"
"Bailey [the neighbor girl] five!"
"Mommy firty-four!" (Note: It sounds too close to forty-four for comfort.)
"Daddy eight!"

Sometimes you'll have a conversation like this:

"Alice, you're a sweetheart."
"No, I no sweetheart, I darling."
"Yes, you're darling."
"No, Mommy darling, I honey."
"Are you my honey?"
"No, I one."

She is an avid fan of the Sesame Street movie Follow That Bird and the Sesame Street Platinum Hits compilation CD, much as Edith was of The Sound of Music and the Sound of Music soundtrack at the same age. Every morning, the vociferous requests come in this order: 1. Mommy milk! 2. Beffast! 3. Big Bird!

Thanks to Sesame Street Alice now sprinkles daily conversation with some fantastic words, including amphibian and easygoing. She talks pretty much non-stop.

She also notices everything. Today we passed a building on campus that we'd never been by before, but she got an obscured sidelong glance through a window and announced, "Gating!" I looked, and sure enough, I could glimpse just a bit of the curved white wall at the end of an ice rink. "Deedee gating. Ali too little gating."

She's even taking notice when you don't realize she's watching or listening. Tonight on the way to dinner she started walking in a funny, crouched, cautious way. I asked what she was doing, and she said, "I careful, I no slip on rocks hiking." They hadn't discussed it, but it seemed that from her perch in the baby backpack she had observed Tom's gait shift on loose gravel during their hikes.

She is as social as can be, calling a big hello to the neighbors or waving at my colleagues with a grin when she sees them around town. When the family picks me up on campus and we walk around, she's delighted to announce "Oooh, lots of people!" whenever we run into a cluster of students. In researching childcare options we've talked briefly about in-home options but are pretty sure Alice will be happiest where there are plenty of other children (all other things being equal, of course), so we're leaning heavily toward daycare settings.

She is working on color words, mostly in the context of shouting whenever she spots a Jeep. (Edith and Tom have been pointing out Jeeps to me, and it didn't take long for Alice to join in the game.) White Jeep! Red Jeep! She's right about 25% of the time, but she's perpetually confident in her pronouncement. (Incidentally, those from households that use "yellow blue things" will appreciate that Alice's favorite shirt is the one she calls her "blue shirt"...that is, her yellow blue shirt.)

Unlike Edith, who never went through a why stage, we're starting to get whys from Alice when our conversation has not sufficiently satiated her appetite for interaction and information. More often she'll ask what? or who dat?, the latter applied to objects as well as people. Our answers will often prompt a knowing, Oh! Yeah!, as if we'd reminded her of something she'd forgotten.

She's a happy little thing but opinionated. Her squeals are piercing when we don't sit in the chair she wants us to sit in, or when she thinks a meal should be over or someone should be answering her question or the sun shouldn't be shining in the window. As a youngest, she's determined to make herself heard.

Taking her cues from Edith, she has started demanding stories in the car. One day I told a silly tale about a princess who takes a trip from her mountain home to the sea to go fishing, and since then Alice has demanded, "Mommy, tell dory princess tuna!" She and Edith have conspired to wrest the Princess Tuna chronicles out of me.

Otherwise, they've started entertaining each other every now and then, which is marvelous. One night they played with Edith's model horse collection in her room, Edith conducting an elaborate fantasy story while Alice was just happy to be included and allowed to touch the toys. Another evening Edith was acting out an oceanic adventure on a campus quad when she called to Alice on the other side of the lawn, "Get out of the boat!" and Alice promptly called back, "Oh yeah! Ali get in da water!"

Those moments reconfirm a sense I've had recently that we have passed into a measurably easier phase of parenting. (Knock on wood, knock on wood.) When you walk around a town with a baby and young toddler in tow, or a toddler and preschooler, so many people stop to smile and admonish you to appreciate these, the best years, because they go so fast. Harried and stressed as I tried to keep track of my offspring and make conversation, I'd nod and mumble pleasantries while silently wondering whether the person who stopped me had suffered amnesia about their children's toddlerhood or whether I really failed to appreciate how much harder it gets later.

Well, adolescence may offer its own challenges and playing chauffeur to kids in multiple extracurriculars may prove draining in its way, but right now we're at a point where I can look back and say definitively that the present is easier than what came before. I used to fantasize about the day when at least one of my children would be able to get into a car and buckle herself in, thinking what a huge difference that one small change would make. At last we're there, and in fact, it does make a huge difference in our hourly quality of life. Not only can Edith get herself in the car, she can get on a bus alone. Indeed, someone else takes her to school and brings her home. She's happy to go and happy to return. She can play outside with her friends and watch for cars and be trusted not to throw herself off the top of the jungle gym. She can get herself a spoon and a yogurt, can open the container, and can throw away the trash when she's done. She can dress and undress herself (even if she still needs prompting). She climbs into a bunk bed each night on her own. After stories we can leave the room while she's still awake, without scratching her back or changing CDs or singing an endless round of songs. And in the morning she wakes to an alarm, gets out of bed without yelling for us, and comes to say hello.

At 21 months Alice is sweetheart, darling, and honey all rolled into one. But toddlers are also unrelenting work--a combination of intense engagement, constant vigilance, and sheer physical labor. I look at one of the people we've met here with children younger than ours, a three year old and a seven month old. And I can see that she's in a different place than we are, always a bit distracted and bleary and beleaguered, even as she contrives to function as an adult and a professional. That still describes us plenty of the time, too. But suddenly there's a bit of freedom to stretch and breathe here and there. It's a good feeling. I'll try to appreciate it, because it goes so fast. And because it makes for a series of pretty big days, one after another.