Back in the Saddle

More than one of our readers, and now Lia herself, have reproved me for my recent blogospheric dereliction. Thus prodded, I once more take up my pen—or more properly, my laptop—or still more properly, Lia’s laptop—to relate to a candid world the comings and goings of our burgeoning little tribe.

It’s been so long since we posted that I hardly know where to begin. A few recent highlights may have to suffice for this remedial sally.

Julia is becoming a prolific writer. She regales Lia and me, as well as her grandparents and teachers, with a surging Niagara of tender missives, both handwritten and electronic. Her letters to her kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Checko, fairly glisten with effusions of affection and expressions of eternal fealty. At a recent bed time we read in Anne of Avonlea about one of Anne Shirley’s students who in a letter addressed to her teacher plagiarized a gushing letter addressed to her mother by a quondam beau. Amused by the letter’s intrinsic mirth, and doubly amused by its affinity with the epistolary effusions of our own firstborn, Lia and I fairly laughed our heads off. Julia observed us, bewildered and disturbed. “Why are you laughing at this sweetest letter ever?” she asked, with all the pathos of ingenuous disapproval.

Because Julia loves to write, Eli gave her a bunch of journals for Christmas. One of them is a writing prompt journal. One prompt reads: “Imagine opening your closet door one morning and walking in to discover that you’ve traveled forward in time! What do you see? What do you plan to do? Write a story telling all about your adventure exploring the future.” Julia’s conception of “the future” has less to do with flying cars and wonder gadgets whose names begin with eerie, lower-case “i”'s than with tomorrow’s adventures at school. And so her account begins:

“One morning I went to my bedroom to snuggle with my parents I opened the door, I’m at School! Then I remembered it was Pajama Day. I still had my favorite Nightgown on. The nightgown had pink, blue, green, yellow, red, and purple sparkles. [Here she inserts the picture of a star, because she meant to write “stars” instead of “sparkles”] I found my teacher standing in front of me. I asked Mrs. Checko (my techer) why we were having pajama day. She answered “because we read Ira sleeps over.” Are we wearing pajamas to be Ira? I asked. Nooooo, she answered, go sit down. I went and sat down.”

The story goes on. An adoring father can’t help but wonder how many times each day Julia is told by her beloved teacher to “go sit down.” Having observed Julia in action at a recent school art exhibition, I can confidently speculate she hears these words often.

On the way to Church a few Sundays back Julia started to speak in a piercingly high register we have all come to know and fear as her “princess voice.” “I think I’m going to have to use a princess voice today,” she explained, “because my throat hurts.” At this point Eli chimed in, perhaps an octave higher still: “I think I’m going to have to use a princess voice today. Because my belly hurts.”

At dinner not long ago Eli was singing a song learned from a home video sent us by heathen aunts and uncles. I did my best to glower my disapproval (singing at the table of any kind is total verboten, and singing pagan anthems during dinner is proscribed a fortiori). Julia perceived this, but Eli did not. “Eli,” Julia pontificated, “Daddy doesn’t like this song.” Then, placing a hand between my line of vision and her mouth, she added in a whisper, “Just sing it when he’s not home!”

Eli recently barged into the bathroom while Lia was in the shower. Lia assumed that the world’s favorite three-year-old merely needed to use the bathroom. What was her surprise, then, when Eli threw back the shower curtain, and in a strenuous voice (punctuated by vehement wags of an earnest finger) proclaimed, “When I am a mom, we will have two rules in my house: First, no fits! Second, no ants!” And then she was off. Our own home currently features no ants; of fits, a superabundance.

Katharine now runs all over the house with all the adorable awkwardness and inefficiency of an eager toddler. Since she now runs from place to place she figures she ought also to run the show. Mostly she does. During dinner tonight she got very mad at Lia (I forget why—probably the indignity of confinement in a highchair after a rigid refusal of the consolations of Mother’s lap) and vented her spleen with a wookie-like wailing and the exaction of vengeance on innocent pineapple cubes. She took one cube after another in her tiny hand, squeezed it to a pulp, then threw it wrathfully upon the floor below. We would have stopped her, but we cowered before the rage of her titan’s fury (and were busy stifling laughs with long and disapproving faces).

In short, then, life is as dull here as it has always been.