The other day, Zeke announced that his friend at school had "sculpted his feelings." I asked him to explain what that meant, and he said he had made a sculpture of what his feelings were. It looked, apparently, like a big ball of mud. Zeke thought about this for a few minutes and announced he wanted to draw his feelings. Then he spent probably three-quarters of an hour making these designs on a small Post-It note, and then explaining what each of them meant. I didn't get around to writing them down until a few days afterwards, so I don't remember everything perfectly.
A few days ago, I overheard the following discussion between Zeke and his best friend K. We were all in the car.
K.: I wish I could have my sister's bed. I want to have my own room and sleep in my own bed. But I also want my mommy to be there with me so I can hug her in the night. Z.: Hm. Well, you could dream something up. You could (pause) ... you could build a ramp. And if in the night you felt like you wanted a hug, you could (pause) ... you could walk on the ramp and go into your mommy's room and get a hug. K. Hm.
Tonight Zeke was asking me about why some big trucks have bunks above their cabs. I explained that it was so the drivers could sleep if they were taking long trips. He then wanted to know how the trucks kept driving while their drivers slept. I explained that they didn't. He was, it seems, thinking about the image of a driver climbing up into a bunk above the cab of his truck and looking out those little windows. He thought for a minute and then remarked:
Daddy -- wouldn't it be funny if there was a window in your head, and you could climb up into your head and look out the window? And then your head would be bouncing around with you in it.
Well, the annual Dogwood Festival has come and gone, which was a lot of excitement for everyone. Zeke actually stood on the porch, pointed to the rides as they began to set up, and -- being too excited even to form words -- let loose shrieks of pure joy and anticipation. In other news, Talia fell down on the front stairs and knocked two of her front teeth loose. One of them now seems to be turning black, which I guess means the nerve is dead, but so far it doesn't look like it's going to fall out. We're waiting to hear from the dentist.
Here are a few favorite recent photos in a slideshow format. Click here to see this whole collection on a single page. When you're watching the slideshow (in this post, or in almost any other slideshow or video) look for a little icon like this: or something similar, here (and usually elsewhere) found in the bottom right corner. If you click that symbol, the slideshow will expand to fill your whole screen.
Zeke also recently figured out that if you sit on your tricycle at the top of a hill and start pedaling, you can get going pretty fast. So far there have been no accidents.
Zeke wrote his first "book." You can view it below, or if that doesn't work, follow this link. To make the image larger, click in the little rectangle in the top right of the gray viewing box below (or on the linked page). Zeke's first book (fingerpaint and dictation)
Presumably many of my three or four readers will be familiar with Theodore Geisel, b.k.a. Dr. Seuss, and maybe also his well-known graduation present book, Oh, the Places You'll Go. We have a copy of this lying around and Zeke has taken a liking to it. He has been asking to have it read to him a lot. But yesterday he decided to "read" it to Talia. I didn't get it all down, but here's a reasonable chunk of it.
When you're on earth, it's not much fun. You're on the outside of the earth. You're done.
Oh, let's go, to the places you'll go. It's in space. In outer space, you know.
You might catch, or you might score, On the greatest one of all. One hundred. Or.
Except when it's not, there's a game you can't win.
The end.
In the original, there are a lot of pages that begin, "Except when it's not," or "Except when you don't," or things like that. Just in case you're wondering. Also, Zeke has suddenly gotten interested in outer space and asks lots of questions about planets. Someone at preschool must have mentioned the fact that Pluto has been demoted to, what is it now, a planetoid or something, because he has been asking me why Pluto used to be a planet and isn't any more. He wants to know if it shrunk.
At any rate, the first line really made an impression on me. And he definitely has the anapestic tetrameter pretty well down.
The photos with the crown are from Talia's birthday. The photos with Zeke and his grandmother are from Christmas. Zeke got a few hand-me-down pink footie pajamas from his friend Carmen and, if he could, would never wear anything else.
If you are a contact of mine on the photo-printing site Snapfish, you can get prints of any of these (and a bunch more) by going to ReinFamilyPictures.Snapfish.com.
Zeke, a few weeks ago, trying to comfort a friend on the way to school:
Don't think about your mommy. And don't think about your daddy. I'm thinking about how nice it is inside our school. And about how nice our teachers are.
Today, when I picked the kids up from day care, Talia informed me: "Eat cake. Happy birthday to you." This was the first time I've heard her tell me, in a declarative way, about something that happened in the past. (There had been a little birthday party for one of the kids in her "class." She couldn't tell me whose birthday it was, but Zeke filled me in on the details.) In fact, I believe it's the first time I've ever heard her use language to describe something that was neither (1) immediately in front of her or (2) something she wanted us to get or do for her. Maybe I'm wrong, but this seems like a major cognitive milestone to me, in terms of how she uses language and how she thinks about events. I don't remember anything quite this dramatic with Zeke.
Here's something else -- two photos, showing Zeke at age 22 months and Talia at age 18 months (a few weeks ago). I think it's pretty striking -- you can really see how much alike they look.
Z.: I want to go with you to the store so you don't forget to buy Froot Loops. Me: Why do you want Froot Loops? Z.: Because they're very expectful to eat. Me: What's "expectful"? Z.: "Expectful" means, um, "really reliable." Me: What does "really reliable" mean? Z.: (after a pause) Poop.
Not sure where he ate Froot Loops, but I don't intend to buy any, just for the record.
It's been a long time without a real update. Sorry about that, loyal readers (all three of you). In the meanwhile the clan has been off on two short (four-day) vacations, one to Ricketts Glen State Park (about fifty miles west of Scranton), where we hung around in a small cabin and did some light hiking (very light) in what passes for mountains in Pennsylvania. The other one was to a rented vacation house at Chincoteague, Virginia, i.e., a trip to the beach. Both were a lot of fun. Both kids liked Ricketts Glen, and they also found they liked the beach, though the waves made them nervous. Zeke in fact was in some distress the first few times he watched his mother go into the surf.
In other news, Talia is really talking. She's hard to understand, but she is definitely stringing short sentences together. She imitates her brother a lot. She has a few fairly adorable verbal idiosyncrasies, like saying something that sounds like "see" instead of "it's" -- thus, when eating, "See good!" or when playing, "See funny!" (You can see an example of that last one in the video at the bottom of this post.) For a while, when she was eating, she'd always comment enthusiastically, "I yike it!" but that seems to have passed. Her other habit is screaming at the top of her lungs when something excites her, and also dancing around, with lots of prodding from the audience. The two of them, at least at the moment, are getting along famously and really enjoy one another most of the time.
I have no real good stories off the top of my head, aside from the little one-liners that I've been posting. But there are a few nice photos. If you are reading this in an email, you probably won't be able to see them; click here to see this post on the web, where everything ought to work properly. Same goes for the little video at the end of the post.
First, here are the photos from Ricketts Glen.
(Note: Some of my favorites aren't visible here because they show someone else's kids. If you want to see those, go to Flickr.com, which is a site I use for managing digital photos, sign up for an account, and then visit my page and add me as a "contact," either as "friend" or "family." I can walk you through this if need be. After that, the hidden photos should be visible here. If this is too much of a pain, well, eventually I'll come up with something else. Also: I have left out many of my own photos that show only scenery, but if you want to see those, they're here as well. Ricketts Glen is a very nice place.)
Here are some Chincoteague photos. For some reason we only took very few (sixteen). You can also see them here.
And finally, here are a couple of other recent favorites. Personally, my favorites are the ones of Zeke and Talia perched together on the "changing table" (i.e., a foam pad on top of a dresser), both goofing around. (For some reason they're not displayed together, but they're part of a series, and it'll be obvious when you flip through them.) All those can also be seen here.
And, one last little tidbit, here is a one-and-three-quarters-minute video of Talia and Zeke jumping up and down in a crib. That's all it is, but it cracks me up anyhow.
Hicked: "a little bit broken." Trains, in particular, can easily become hicked. Moots: "when you do what you're not told to do it, but you do anyway." No usage example. Grass-griffs: "a little hedgehog that comes out at night and sleeps in the day, and eats grass."
or something similar, here (and usually elsewhere) found in the bottom right corner. If you click that symbol, the slideshow will expand to fill your whole screen. 
