That's what she...sang

So I finally had to tell Harper she was forbidden from telling Hudson 'no' ever again. And what do you think that eager little mind has done to evade the prohibition? Sing, of course. This morning it was to the tune of "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes": NO...no-no-no-no-no...nonoNO! came wafting from the backseat on the way home from the park. Then when we got home, it was "The Battle Hymn of the Republic"-- no-no-no-no-no-no-no-no-no-nonononoNO...NO,nonononononononononononoNOOOOOO..NO!"
I should have loosed the fateful lightning of my terrible swift sword, but I was too busy laughing my head off in the other room.

To add to the air of musical comedy/disobedience around here, we were out for a walk yesterday and Hudson got a little ahead. He turned around to see if I noticed his daring-do. I asked him to come back and he smiled and broke into this little soft shoe dance. Perhaps he was trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored. Again, the cute factor precluded any sort of meaningful discipline.

Let there be blood

Hudson got his second bloody lip yesterday trying to walk down some steps in the Tot Spot at the Children's Museum. Depth judgment comes much later than it should really. On a note less bloody, we got to see our friend Izzy's dance recital later in the afternoon. She did a fantastic job. My favorite part was the moment of contemplation she took in the middle of the tap routine to "Good Ship Lollipop." Harper was very excited about the recital until we got there and she remembered that she had planned to wear her "ballet shoes" but we had forgotten. I'll confess that I had not reminded her because I didn't really want her wearing her too small white patent dress shoes in public, but I felt pretty sad when her eyes welled up with tears of disappointment and she kept saying, "Oh Mommy, I can't dance with the ballerinas without my ballet shoes." She recovered and managed, much to my surprise, to actually sit in a chair and watch quietly while the girls danced. She did get a chance to dance with Izzy when the recital was over, though it was more Twyla Thorpe sort of galloping and flexed toes than anything classical per se. Probably because of the shoes. She is getting an actual pair of ballet shoes for her birthday in a couple of weeks. Though after having seen them in action, she also would like some tap shoes. I'm going to get my mom to dig around in the attic and try to find my old ones. I took lots of dance classes but always preferred gymnastics. I was a decent tumbler in my day and, to impress Harper and Hudson, decided to do a cartwheel in my parents' backyard while we were there over the weekend. Just a plain cartwheel, mind you, not the aerials I used to be able to do. Oh, it hurt. Like fire. All the way down my leg. I really, really need to start doing some yoga or pilates or something. Anyway, they did look awfully impressed that Mommy had twirled around like that.

The snipers made me do it

I lied. Our current apartment is actually 988 square feet. My fact checker, who is, incidentally, also my legal counsel AND spouse, discovered my prevarication while looking online for a way to get around our rate hike. Understatement is a valid rhetorical device, probably not seen quite as often as its good friend hyperbole, but I was basically trying to get you to feel sorry for us which is just ridiculous considering that we still have more living space than approximately 98% of the world.

I read this actual sentence in an obituary a few weeks ago: (I changed the name)

"Louisa may have had many ventures but her true love lay with Jazzercise."

I read them mostly because I think it's interesting how many euphemisms there are for the word 'died'. I think 'expired' is my least favorite.

We got some money to buy a new television for Christmas and we finally got around to actually buying one a couple of weeks ago. Our old one was eleven years old and was deeper than it was wide. It required rabbit ears. When the new tv showed us its sparkly high definition, the husband and I chortled with glee. It must be like what it feels like to get glasses for the first time. Of course, it is also precisely the kind of nonsense Ray Bradbury was warning us about in Fahrenheit 451. Why engage in the real world when the virtual world is so accommodating?

Harper is a pretty even-tempered kid most of the time. She does, however, tend to get frustrated quickly when she can't do something by herself, like get a toy that's really wedged into the corner of the toy box. She usually lets out this high pitched grunt/scream. Yesterday she took it up a notch. She was trying to ride her tricycle through a too narrow pathway in her room and the wheel got tangled in a corner of her tent. I was washing dishes and heard the grunt/scream and was walking over to render aid (and encourage her to ask for help before the grunt/scream instead of as a last resort) just as she threw herself backwards, a la Mary Catherine Gallagher on SNL of old, into the side of her tent. To add to the comedy, she had earlier taken off most of her clothes and was wearing these white patent dress shoes with ankle straps that she calls her "ballet shoes." So there she was on her back in the middle of her wrecked tent crying, yelling, and waving her ballet shoes in the air in utter frustration. I had to put her in her bed for five minutes just to compose myself.
Hudson thinks it is hilarious when I blow my nose. He is also entertained when I am putting my hair in a ponytail. He starts talking in the high pitched voice he uses when he sees animals so I can only assume that he thinks I have suddenly sprouted a puppy on the back of my head.

Weep with those who weep

Our rent is going up $300 a month; $600 if we go month to month. That's right. For just under 900 square feet. We'll be moving. Again.
Today we went to the library. Harper fell off the curb and skinned her knee. Once inside, Hudson fell and cut his lip open while trying to get a better view of the book Harper and I were reading. It bled rather impressively, he wailed very loudly, and Harper did not get to finish her book which left her cranky. We got home and I put Hudson in the highchair so I could wash Harper's hands and when we came back into the kitchen he was chewing on his shoe. Picturing all of the invading microbes rushing into his cut lip, I overreacted. "OH HUDSON--Nooooo!" And this is just too much for the little wounded one. His poor swollen lip makes an upside-down "U" and he starts weeping. As I'm getting him out of the highchair to comfort him, Harper's puppy apparently falls and hurts his lip too and Harper decides that the best way to comfort him is to start crying as well. So, because misery loves company, I joined them. There we sat, for about 5 minutes, having a good old fashioned catharsis. Then we dried ourselves off, had some lunch, and took (Lord willing) very long naps.

Fastly

Harper enjoys adverbs. Her current favorites are 'fastly' and 'hardly' and she likes to use them in the same sentence. "Mommy, I'm going to run fastly to the swings and I want you to push me very hardly on my back so I can be like a bird!" I was downloading some pictures today and saw this one from two years ago when I was maybe 6 weeks pregnant with Hudson:
And this one is from yesterday. We were heading to the zoo with the Grandparents Pate. I was the only one who cared that we were taking a picture apparently.Fastly, indeed.

Harper tells a story to a boy at the park and he does not care

Harper found a big kid basketball at the park last week and headed over to the half court to have a go at it. Mostly she had trouble concentrating because I put Hudson down and she was convinced he was trying to steal the ball from her even when he was toddling in the opposite direction. "He might get HURT," she explained with false benevolence, to justify her hoarding. Just then, a group of three boys wandered over. I know one of them. He is seven and has a really nice nanny and two younger sisters. He grabbed the ball when Harper put it down and I asked if it was his. He conceded it was not, so I told him they could all play with it, but that they would have to share. They did an okay job for a few minutes but Harper's turns were becoming increasingly shorter so she wandered off and left them to their Big Boy game. She stood at the edge of the court and was jumping up and down making this grunting noise while waving her arms above her head. I inquired. "I'm trying to get the moon, Mommy!" I looked up and sure enough, there it was. She was getting a fair amount of air (let's say 3 inches) and her little face was so resolute, her little voice so strong ("Come HERE, Moon! I'm TRYING to GET you!) that I do believe that she really believed that if she just kept trying, that moon would indeed be gotten. Just then one of the boys, who looked to be about four, but was probably older because he was wearing those shoes with the wheels in them, wheeled close by. Harper, mistaking his proximity for interest, (a common problem, I am afraid, among girls and boys) began to explain her efforts. "We have a story! About Little Bear!" and with that, he wheeled away. She let her story trail off and went back to jumping. She didn't seem bothered. I, however, felt as though someone had shoveled out my stomach. It's not like I expected the kid to stop the basketball game and gather his friends around in a listening circle, I just thought that he probably should. So I went over and let her tell me and Hudson all about Little Bear and his space helmet. Here she is having a picnic with her puppy Joshua, who listens to every word of every story.

Not this tide

On Masterpiece Theatre last night there was a movie, called "My Boy Jack," that will either make you want to vote for John McCain, or it will make you not want to vote for John McCain. It had nothing to do with John McCain. It depicts Rudyard Kipling and his son Jack, who, in spite of extremely poor eyesight, was allowed to train as an officer (solely because of his famous father's influence) and, at age seventeen, go off to France to lead men into battle during WWI. Kipling, a staunch supporter of Britain's entry into the war against Germany, gave fiery speeches that inspired young men to enlist in the cause. He was also (according to the movie--it might have been for dramatic effect) part of a committee that received all of the dismal news from the front and decided how it would be disseminated to the public so people wouldn't lose heart. He heard, in excruciating detail, the stories of the annihilation in the trenches and he still encouraged his only son to go in pursuit of valor. So I happened to read an article about John McCain's two youngest sons in the paper yesterday. The elder is a junior at the Naval Academy and the younger is 19 and, as an enlisted Marine, has already served a tour in Iraq. The war at home, indeed.

Today, my boy Hudson is still small enough to fit under my chin as I rock him on my chest.