Public declarations on personal hygiene

It seems that strangers have stopped commenting on Alice's eyes and now comment on how clearly she articulates her words for her age. This can be both good and bad.

(1) Imagine you're in an airport bathroom, washing your hands. The place is crowded with travelers. Right next to your elbow on an improvised changing table is a small girl whose mother has finished wiping the child's messy bum and now is wrestling a fresh diaper into place. Suddenly a little voice rises up from the prone figure:

"Uh oh. I need to use the toilet."

The mother, aware that everyone nearby has heard this perfectly clear sentence and is watching, can't just pull up the child's pants and ignore the comment but now has to wait in line for one of the stalls, lest she seem to be ignoring her child's bodily needs. Indeed, you prefer not to stand close any longer, lest an accident soon occur. Never mind that if could you follow the mother and child in into the stall, you would discover that the child, having been stripped down and propped up on the paper-lined seat, in fact had no more business to attend to.

(2) Imagine you're attending a lovely service of lessons and carols to begin your advent season. In the pew in front of you a small child is lying in its mother's arms with its face tucked toward the mother's belly. Asleep? Who knows. At least the child is not disrupting the choir.

Until, in a hushed moment, the child sits up, announces, "I need to brush my teeth!" and starts smacking her lips and sticking out her tongue as if trying to get rid of an awful taste. Oh so that's what's going on up there...

She gets it

Tom and I frequently marvel at how much Alice seems to understand about what's going on around her. It's probably a common experience for parents of toddlers, stumbling on just how much their child understands about the world from one day to the next.

A perfect example was Alice's comment on the way home in the car yesterday evening. In the front seat I was relating to Tom a colleague's child's recent questions about God. My friend's four year old had asked, "If God is everywhere, does that mean he's in my armpit?" Tom and I paused to think about the theological implications of the question...

From the backseat Alice piped up, "Jesus in my shoe!"

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 The other night I was singing her "Peace Like a River" at bedtime. I was making my way through the verse, "I've got love like an ocean in my soul..." when Alice stopped nursing to comment, "Ocean beach water. Ocean beach water?" 

Yes, the ocean is the same thing as the water at the beach, I confirmed. 

"I got water in my soul?" Alice asked. "In my soul?"

At least she didn't go on to ask what the soul is.

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Today I started to put a blue wool jumper over her head that she hasn't worn since last spring. "Mommy knit this sweater Alice," she said, correctly.

This evening when we were playing she looked over at my feet and commented, "Mommy knitted Mommy socks." In fact, I hadn't, but they indeed were more like hand-knit socks--variegated, textured, thicker--than the regular machine-made socks I wear. I don't think Alice has ever seen me knitting socks. (I don't do it often.) How did she know they are among those things that are hand-knit, and that this particular pair was a  plausible handknit?

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Today I was looking back at this post about Alice's mispronunciations and realized with some regret that she has corrected all of them. The kid not only speaks clearly, she now uses words like hangnail,  meerkat, and actually. It won't be long until she follows in the footsteps of Edith and Desi and gets started on her dissertation.

Environmental musings from a home on the range

A few of the thoughts that have come to mind--mine or Alice's--during my week as temporary director of the domestic front:

-Is the breathtaking view of a snow-capped mountain range from the grocery store parking lot sufficient compensation for the fact that the grocery store doesn't sell coffee yogurt? Or any Dannon yogurt? Or real bagels? Or a decent loaf of crusty French bread? I never thought I would miss Wegman's as acutely as I do. But then, if we're to take eating locally seriously, maybe I shouldn't be asking for New York bagels and abundant fresh produce in an arid climate 2000 miles west of New York?

-Is it ecologically better to drive the 18-mile round-trip to Home Depot for CFL lightbulbs or to order them online and have someone deliver them to my house? What about the 20 miles to Michael's versus direct delivery of picture-mounting tabs? The 24 miles to Old Navy, Children's Place, or Gymboree or direct delivery of children's outwear? Or should people who live in such a low-density, sprawling city be leading the charge towards doing without so much stuff?

The miles one has to put on the car for a standard shopping trip here drive me batty...the more so because they don't seem to drive other people batty. I had an illuminating conversation with a young hairdresser native to the Springs who seemed unable to envision the kind of development pattern I was describing when I said I really missed walkable commercial districts.

-Now that we're in a place where the skies are not cloudy all day (or at least haven't been since August), are disposable diapers in fact a more ecologically friendly choice than cloth?

-I don't know about the antelope, but the deer do roam here, up and down the street, through our backyard, up and down the hill, all day long. Should I feel guilty that we've so thoroughly invaded their habitat or glad to think we can share the space so amicably?

-Is it reasonable, given the carbon footprint of air travel, to want so much to be able to share this gorgeous place with all the friends and family I'm hoping will visit?

Alice's contribution, on being directed to dry her hands one morning in our home bathroom:

-Why not paper towels here at home?

And totally unrelated to environment, today for her 23-month birthday (the last time we'll count in months...sniff), Alice popped out with the following:



And then she didn't stop--just kept chanting it over and over.

Of Halloween and the morning after

Well, Halloween was quite the affair in our neighborhood! It felt something like a strategic conquest of the foothill territory by marauding bands of school kids, who flocked from house to house in groups of 20 and more, with parents a few steps behind. There were children absolutely everywhere, the air ringing with shouts. I went out with the girls and soon got caught up with a group that included two of her buddies from kindergarten and one of my colleagues, and we trooped around with them. Some houses gave out rum and tequila shots to grownups! About a dozen houses had elaborate haunted houses set up in their garages or as the gauntlet you had to run to get to the front door. Manning these seemed to be the special duty of middle-school and high-school boys, who relayed messages to each other about whether each arriving group should be scared to the hilt or at a modified G-rated level. Our group of little guys was treated to nothing spookier than purple lights, smoke machines, some homemade monsters hanging from the rafters, and one slightly timid live corpse poking its head out of a coffin. To my surprise, Edith really liked it. Though if she hadn't, there were more than enough houses where no such challenges stood between the kids and candy. Edith had stamina for about two blocks worth of trick-or-treating, and then we headed home, where we found Tom hiding out in the dark on the living room floor trying to watch the World Series without alerting people outside to the fact that he was there, as he had run out of candy after the first 150 kids or so.

With the 'cross-the-street neighbor kids

The sky over the mountains as we set out trick-or-treating

One of the neighborhood haunted houses--one had to run the gauntlet to get to the front door

November always feels like a blessedly austere sort of month by comparison...at least for the first couple of weeks, before Thanksgiving. I find I appreciate the simplicity, sobriety, and chance for remembrance of beloved folks on All Saints' Day ever more with each year. This year it took on particularly potent meaning, as Tom's grandfather passed away in Delaware on October 29--and we thought of my uncle in New York who passed away prematurely and abruptly earlier this fall. Then last night, as Tom was preparing to leave for the East Coast for his grandfather's memorial service, he learned that his step-grandmother on the other side of the family had just passed away. It has been a sober fall in that respect.

So Alice and I are spending the next week or so together hanging out while Tom is away and Edith is at school. This morning she helped me rake leaves in the backyard and stomp them down into a large garbage bin, while three deer sat in the grass and watched us. They are fearless, these Western deer. Fortunately the bears seem a little more reluctant to encounter people. On the other hand, our neighbor mentioned at the busstop this morning that she'll be glad to turn back the clocks this weekend, because her middle schooler has to be at the busstop at 7am, before it's light out now, and she doesn't feel comfortable letting her daughter stand outside in the dark while the mountain lions are still out and about. Once again, we ain't Jersey any more!

Spending time in the backyard offers good opportunities for wearing handknits, some recently completed (mine and Edith's) and some from last fall (Alice's).

Edith's sweater is in her school colors featuring her school mascot, for Spirit Days. One of the girls across the street has been attending cheerleading camp and taught Edith a local cheer: "We ARE the MIGHTy MUStangs, and we DO AS we PLEASE!" Edith was chanting it the other day, and I mentioned that I wasn't sure I liked the sentiment, because it seemed to suggest a disregard for other people's concerns and for living in right relationship. (I know--it's a sports cheer--but coming from the mouth of a kindergartner outside the context of a stadium, it just didn't sound right.) Edith thought a moment, then amended, "We ARE the MIGHTy MUStangs, and we DO as WE are TOLD!" Now that will have opponents quaking in their boots...