Logic

I love it when Penny explains things to me with a, "well, duh, Mommy," look on her face. Yesterday, she and Tray went to Lowes to buy some new flowers for our window boxes. The violas from this Spring have finally kicked the bucket. When they got back, Tray and Penny came inside and she ran to bring me a flower she'd picked off one of the vinca plants. Tray turned right around and went back outside. I called out to him to ask if he needed any help, but he didn't hear me, so I asked Penny if Daddy needed any help. She said, "no, Mommy. Stay inside with me." I said, "but Penny, Daddy might need some help. Did he buy a lot of flowers? Will he need help carrying them all?" She said (with that look on her face), "well, he can carry them one at a time."

Opposites

Penny is really working on her opposites this week. A couple days ago at lunch she was leaning her head really close to her plate and saying, "near," and then leaning way back and saying, "far." Yesterday morning she had a cup of juice and she held it way up in the air over her head and said, "up," and then she put it down on the ground and said, "down." And she does it in conversation frequently too. She'll say stuff like, "that truck is big. It is not small." The thing is that we haven't been working on opposites with her at all. We do have at least one book that features opposites, but I can't recall having read it to her recently. I've been encouraging, but not overly enthusiastic lest she decide that my interest means she will stop doing it. If I started trying to work on them with her, I'm sure she'd shut down and not want to talk about opposites ever again! I watched her draw a P on a piece of paper this morning and I said, "yay, Penny!" a bit too enthusiastically and she threw the pen down and started crying. Easily embarrassed, that one. I have no idea where she gets it - lol!

Regression

I won't write about my new nephew Ethan since his parents haven't posted pictures or anything of their own yet. I don't want to jump the gun. So, instead, I am going to write about Penny's reaction to meeting Ethan. In a word: jealous. She was very interested in looking at him, but she refused to hug him, kiss him, or even say his name. She was obviously concerned that everyone seemed more interested in him than in her. She kept trying to get people's attention to come play or sit with her. After I got to hold Ethan for a bit all wrapped up in his swaddling blanket, and I had passed him to someone else, she came over to me and reached up with her arms and said, "my turn." I figured she was sad and wanted some reassurance from me, so I was more than happy to pick her up and give her a hug. But that's not what she wanted. As soon as I got her off the ground, she immediately flopped over on her side for me to carry her like a baby - like I haven't carried her in over a year. The whole room (me included) just died laughing, and the whole time every time I could catch a breath to stop and look at her, she would squeeze her eyes shut and try to look serene. And that would make me laugh even harder. I could not believe how jealous she was. I think this is fairly normal though. I saw a blog post from one of my favorite bloggers that just had another baby. Her two year old son climbed up into the clear bassinet thing that they bring the baby to your room in and attempted to curl up inside of it. Isn't it funny how they try to revert to being babies to catch your attention?

So anyway, since we got back I haven't mentioned Ethan much to her since it obviously upsets her. The first day back she was clingier than normal, but that's settled down. However, while we were at the hospital she watched the nurse show everyone how to swaddle Ethan "like a burrito." And so every night when I wrap Penny up in her hooded towel after her bath, she wants to be wrapped up "like a burrito." Last night, she wanted me to carry her sideways again wrapped up in her towel and she said, "like my cousin Ethan." That's the first time I'd heard her say his name, and it was very sweet (but it took two and a half days before she'd say it). She's still working it all out for sure. I knew this could happen with siblings, but I'm shocked she's had such a strong reaction to a cousin. Maybe it's because she's just at that age where she's realizing that she's not a baby anymore, but is scared to be too grown up.

Ballet Terms

I am learning so much about ballet thanks to Penny. We checked out two Angelina Ballerina books from the library when we went last week, including the original book of the series in which Angelina can't stop dancing all the time and everywhere so her parents finally put her in ballet lessons. This is more or less the situation in our house. Penny wants to dance all the time and everywhere, and asks us twenty or thirty thousand times a day to come and dance with her. At first, she would want me to dance and show her what to do, but now she makes up her own "dances" and shows me what to do - ha! This usually involves, "put your foot here, Mommy. Now jump like this, and..." The dances nearly always end with, "and now, fall down!" In Angelina Ballerina, Angelina knocks over her a pitcher of milk and some pies by doing a "beautiful arabesque" in the kitchen. Penny loves to tell me how she is now doing an "alabesque." And at the playground on Friday afternoon she was climbing around the big rope netting stuff putting one foot in the neighboring rope square and saying, "Step," and then putting the other foot in the square and saying, "Pah-zay." I think she means "passe" which is actually where you put your foot on your opposite leg just below the knee. That was part of the dance they were doing for their recital (which we didn't participate in). Anyway, it's funny to hear her running around saying all the ballet terms. It's going to be a long summer until dance classes start up again in the fall...

The Equivalent of a Crinkled Ball of Aluminum Foil

The house we live in in Troy has only one bathroom - and no bathtub. It only has a shower, which means we had to get inventive with a toddler requiring a daily washing and who is scared of taking an actual shower (not to mention the parental logistics of giving her a shower). So, we went to Tractor Supply and bought an aluminum washtub. Every night we put it in the shower and fill it up with the shower head. Her bath toys are old Rapala fishing lures with the hooks removed.

I tell you that story to tell you this one: yesterday Tray purchased two inflatable turkey decoys (that do, I must admit, look quite realistic). He blew one up and staged it in the garden outside for Penny to "find." She named it Mavis and has been carrying it around all day talking to it and telling it stories. Mavis even ate supper with us tonight.

Sweet Offer

A short anecdote, but just a hair too long for a facebook status update:

This afternoon we were picking green beans in our garden. I was holding the plant and directing Penny to which beans to pull. She was handing them to Tray who was putting them in his shirt pockets, but he was running out of room. He said something semi-sarcastic like, "it sure would be nice if we had some sort of bean collecting device. Maybe like a ... basket." Penny, not catching the sarcasm, very sweetly and earnestly said, "I have my Easter Bunny basket in the house!" So sweet.

An even shorter anecdote: I walked outside and met Penny coming around the corner to come inside. I sort of startled her, and she said, "I realized you were outside." Maybe a shade of meaning off, but pretty close. I didn't realize she knew the word realize.

The past week

In about thirty minutes, I am about to give my last final exam for the Spring semester. This is my 10 o'clock T-Th World Geography class. Our last day of class before today's final was Tuesday. As in: the day before the tornadoes. I was sitting here realizing that it hasn't even been a whole week since I last saw these kids, but so much has changed. The devastation across Alabama (and other states too) has just affected us all so much. It's heartrending. And then the news about Osama bin Laden last night. Tray and I had gone to bed early without checking the news, so we didn't find out about it until this morning. I was just reading an article in the Washington Post about the celebrations last night at the White House and at the 9/11 memorial. The author was understandably appalled that people were celebrating a man's death in that manner, but he went out to investigate and talked to the crowd who were mostly young (children at the time of 9/11) and they weren't celebrating his death so much as the closure to what is for them a lifetime of stress and worry and war. I'm not sure they were right to feel any closure from this, but I can at least understand wanting to celebrate that.

And it does remind me to put myself in my student's shoes again. World Geography is a freshman level class. The average freshman is 18 year old. They were 8 when 9/11 happened. The majority of their lives up until now have been framed by that day and the things that came after it. I was born in 1978 during the Cold War, and most of my readers here were born much before that. Still, I remember worrying about nuclear war, and where the bomb shelters were. I remember when the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union dissolved. Most of my students now weren't even born then. Their whole worldview is completely different.

I'm not sure exactly how I feel about everything right now, but I can at least sort of see how they might be feeling. It's just -- it hasn't even been a week since I saw them last.