mornings on our street

Yesterday morning, 7AM. Nina and Calvin are outside in the cool morning fog, zooming up and down the sidewalk on bikes (training wheels for Calvin). Both are barefoot. Both hooting and hollering. As usual, they are the only ones of the 12 kids who live on this street who actually PLAY OUTSIDE. and I am severely reminded, once again, of the chorus to John Prine's _Spanish Pipedream_.

Littlest one

Rose can now climb out of her crib, but she can't open doors yet. So occasionally we are awakened by the sound of her talking/singing to herself while standing on a stool and turning the lights in her room on and off and on and off and on and off and...

She is losing some of her baby talk, but her brother is still named "Calbin" as far as she is concerned, "ch" is still "ts" (as in, "I love you soooo muts!") and "r" is often "w" (as in, "Calbin, don't scweam at me!").

She has a toy stethoscope. She will come up to you and say "I want to listen to your heart", lift up your shirt, (or as she says it, "shuuuurt"), and put the stethoscope on your stomach. Then she says "Go [breath in, breathe out]." You comply. She chirps "Thank You! Now I wanna give you a shot. Don't worry, it won't pints (pinch, per above) you." She gives you a toy shot, and you of course say "Ow." She replies "I'm sowwy! You want me to kiss it all better?"(actually, "You wan meeta kissit all betta?") Repeat until charmed.

Bedtime songs have become an exercise in comedic timing. It started with my pausing before the last word in a given line until she cracked up. Then she started laughing immediately and singing the last word herself. Now, she's decided it's even funnier if she only sings the first *syllable* of the last word in a line. Which leads to things like:
P: [...]Someone's in the kitchen with
R: ...DIE!...
P: -nah, someone's in the kitchen I
R: ...KNOW! [giggle]
P: -oh-oh-oh, Someone's in the kitchen with
R: ..DIE! [cackle]
P: -nahhhhhh! Strummin' on the old
R: ...[giggle] BAN [guffaw]
P: JO!

and finally, I leave you with this chilling image. I'm doing dishes after dinner, A. is out on an errand. Rose wanders in, pulls the towel off the refrigerator door handle and says "Don't worry Papa, I clean it up!"

continuing on the theme of bedtime for Rose...

This evening, the contents of Old Macdonald's Farm included: cats, dogs, chickens, roosters, pigs, cows, squirrels, bears, badgers, ocelots, polar bears, flamingos, elephants, a herd of wildebeest, penguins, a Gaboon viper, kangaroos, humpback whales, a yak, and a Thompson's gazelle.

and in other musical kid news

Driving to the pet store with Nina and Rose, about a week ago. "Sheena is a punk rocker" comes on the radio. Nina looks at me and says, "This is the Beach Boys, right?"

I was dumbstruck. I thought briefly of calling a moratorium on the Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus until she demonstrated a modicum of understanding of the rock/pop back catalog, but then I remembered that a college acquaintance once asked, while "Stairway to Heaven" was playing, "Oh wow, is this Rush?"

So we all have our little blind spots, you know. She has access to, conservatively, over 300 days worth of uninterrupted, non-repeating music in this house, if she decides such things are important :)