"The night wet and windy, two children dressed as pumpkins waddling across the square, and the shop windows covered in paper spiders, all the tawdry Muggle trappings of a world in which they did not believe..."
A, with the air of opening a roundtable discussion: "You know, Mom, we need more boys."
G: "What, in our family?"
A: "Yeah, we need more boys in our family."
G: "Do you want a brother?"
A, laughing: "No! I already have a sister."
G: "Oh, good. Well, what do you suggest?"
A: "Hmmm, I don't know."
G: "Well, what other kinds of boys could we have?"
A: "We need another daddy. Two daddies."
G: "Oh. Where should we get a second daddy? They're hard to come by."
A: "We'll find one walking the snow. And we'll scoop him up, and take him home."
At least we have until the first hard snow to prepare.
I have a vision of Alice asking us that question some day, as she scrolls through the blog reading accounts of every amusing thing Edith said as a toddler and looking in vain for such a record of her own toddler years. Poor second child. It's probably a good thing we aren't planning to have more children, or they'd go entirely unrecorded.
So before I forget or move on to the next to-do item, a few recent Alicisms.
Did I say that her imaginary play was less intense and demanding than Edith's? That clearly was the kiss of death. Recently she's been on us (literally) from the moment we wake up (i.e. the moment she wakes us up), begging us to play pretend. We don't have nearly as much time for it as she would like, but some funny moments have come out of those time we do play.
(1)
She recently was giving me a physical exam with her doctor kit, after I'd come in telling her I felt bad. She used each of her instruments in turn--standard operating procedure for pretend-play doctors--while murmuring and looking serious. Then she pronounced her diagnosis:
"You have Cheerios in your heart."
Well yes, I guess that would do it.
I was later found to have Cheerios in the ear as well.
But I'm hoping the Cheerios in the stomach with which I was diagnosed on my third visit will prove less serious.
(2)
I was being instructed to play princess on the playground. (Edith is adamantly unavailable for something as gross as playing princess. She prefers less girly pretend, she says, and so was lobbying for...pretend unicorns and magical rabbits.)
I was Alice's princess. She was my fairy godmother. She waved her wand to give me a beautiful blue ballgown and announced that I was ready to go to the ball. Then she beckoned me over with a finger.
"I have to tell you something before you go to the ball: If the prince kicks the ball in your face, it could hurt. Watch out."
The day on which everything in American history happened--if you learned your history from Dave Barry, that is.
Also the day on which snow first came to the Front Range this year. There was snow on the peak on September 16 and again at the beginning of this week, but nothing in the lower elevations. Most of the week was in the high 70s and low 80s. Then this morning we woke up to gray clouds and driving snow. Wet flakes at our elevation, which only coated roofs, but cozy enough for a morning puttering around the house for us all. When it cleared we went out. Down 300 feet in Colorado Springs, where we had to do our errands, all was dry. Above us the hills were covered with snow, the pines dusted and sparkling silver, bare ground gleaming white. It was gorgeous.
Unfortunately my camera batteries were dead. In lieu of snow-crested vistas, I give you a shot of Alice, who I realized has been relatively neglected in recent blog photos.
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| "Now show them my backpack!" |
...I am seeking a Halloween costume for my six-year-old daughter that is neither cute & sexy, pretty & sexy, Goth & sexy, frightening & sexy, nor historical & sexy. Edith doesn't understand why every Halloween costume for girls online
seems to be a variation on what she calls a ballerina and I call a
cocktail waitress. Neither do I.
She wants to be a large wild cat (a panther, preferably). That means she wants to put on a full-body costume that has ears and fur and whiskers. She does not want to wear a mini-skirt and legwarmers in leopard print with a spandex top and call that a leopard costume. She wants to paint her nose pink, not paint her lips red. As far as she knows, no one would ever connect the word "tail" with any of these costumes, because they don't have long, furry, feline appendages.
If this is what Halloween looks like in the elementary school years, I might start to understand the population protesting that Halloween is an immoral holiday promoting subtly dangerous messages. Unfounded fears, I thought. Maybe I just didn't appreciate where the threat lay.
Edith and I were talking about her day.
"What did you do on the playground?" I asked.
"I played with Serenity and Faith," she said.
If only we all could say that at day's end.
Alas, I resumed teaching today after a four-month hiatus, with Ryan, Jackson, Whitney, Clementine, and 15 others--Jitters, Nerves, and Trepidation surely among them.
I'll aim to take a few lessons from the first-grade playbook.
