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.
One waffle with butter and syrup. Two hard-boiled eggs. One chunk of cheese. One piece of toast with jam. Almost half a pound of mashed sweet potato covered with about a quarter-cup of yoghurt. She's two years old, folks.
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.
Sorry for the long silence. There's no especially cogent explanation -- mainly, I don't seem to have collected many very good pictures, and it's only fairly recently that I managed to get my home computer working properly again. Anyhow, though, I intend to begin again, and to show I've turned over a new leaf, here's a nice webcam photo of Talia for you. I have a camera attached to the computer at home, and I was trying to prevail on Talia to do something cute for it. Like, for example, sing. Ordinarily she seems to sing pretty much constantly, except, I guess, when you want to show her off. Her favorite song is the alphabet, but she will repeat almost anything she hears anyone else singing. Anyhow, though, this is all I could get out of her.
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.
I've been sick in bed all day (I'll spare you details). When Zeke came home from daycare, he finger-painted this picture and brought it in to me. His remarks: "Daddy, maybe this will cheer you up; it's pretty blue."
Tonight I told Zeke he had to come brush his teeth. He said he wanted to play for one more minute. I said O.K. but that he had to promise not to argue. This is the ninety-second conversation that ensued.
Zeke's bedtime routine has come to include the song, "Green Grow the Rushes, O," which is interesting. He used to love the as a baby, and then we sort of forgot about it, maybe because it's so long, and it never seemed like a great bedtime song. It's a traditional cumulative counting song, which begins with one and runs through twelve. Anyhow, he now wants to hear it before bed. Tonight, presumably wanting to postpone the inevitable, he interrupted me halfway through the song and instructed me that I had to sing all the way through twenty tonight. I laughed and told him I didn't know any more after twelve, but that I'd see what I could do. He answered, "If you don't know the other numbers, I can teach you." I said O.K. After I got to twelve, and stopped, we had this exchange:
Z.: Daddy, you forgot two numbers. Thirteen and fourteen. Me: I don't know those. Z.: I can sing them for you. Me: Okay. Z.: (after a pause, in a speaking voice) Thirteen. (pause) Fourteen. Z.: (after another long pause) Daddy, thirteen and fourteen are hard to explain. Very hard to explain.
This is actually Zeke's bear. It was given to him by a then student of mine around the time he was born. He never developed much of an interest in this or any other stuffed animal, but Talia absolutely loves it.
Me: "Zeke, can you tell me what 'hicked' means?" Z.: "Hicked means kind of breaked. With a train." Unfortuately it gets cut off before the real explanation.
Sunday we explored Ridley Creek State Park in Media, PA. Talia picked as many dandelions as she could find -- I didn't count but at one point I think she must have had at least a dozen in her fist.
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."
We took a several-hour-long trip to Naani and Pop-pop's place today. No great stories, but Heather took some photos. Here's a slideshow, or click here to see them all laid out.
