Gingerbread Yurts

Where would we be without Auntie Rebecca? Audrey took part in tree decorating and gingerbread house making (called yurts instead because it turns out it's really hard to get those suckers to hold together with just frosting) with her best buds, Ruth and Bethiah. Holiday decorations at our house are way, way up at the tippy top of the Fake Mantle where Calvin can't reach them. We've got greenery up there, all feathery and fine near the ceiling, and a nativity scene on the lower mantle by my grandmother, all quilted and stuffed pieces, and including a manger made from scraps of my grandfather's plaid polyester pants.

Overheard: When I told Audrey she needed to do some more serious brushing of her teeth, not just dangling the brush from her mouth: "Mom, you've been giving me a headache all the week." And when spotted taking chap stick out of my purse, "Now: don't be mad in the first place!" On the sweeter side, she often says, "I have a secret to tell you!!! I love you!!!!" She is often in spasms of excitement about matching colors, as in "Mommy!!!!!!!! I just noticed something!!!!!!!! Your blue socks and my blue t-shirt match each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Observed: Calvin, in an assortment of trouble.

Calvin and I have a lot of time here to ourselves when Audrey's at preschool, and for short periods of time I can let him play by himself. As I wash dishes, he unloads the pots and pans from the cabinets and wears them as hats, or pulls clean laundry out of the basket and tucks it into the recycling bins. A new favorite game is to take glass jars from those bins and push them through the cat door, sending the jars bouncing down the back stairs. (The noise and quick reactions are, apparently, worth the effort.) Other times, as I sip of a cup of lukewarm coffee, and page leisurely through a magazine, I'll feel a little tug at my shoe and realize that he is there under the table, my companionable little son, sharing the morning with me and quietly eating a paper bag.

His words are few. And we aren't 100% sure he's saying them, except in the first instance. They are:

Uh-Oh (all-purpose, and so useful in a house of small children)

Au-deeeeeee (center of the Universe)

Go! (proceeds car trips)

Reeeeeeeeeeee ("Read," spoken while tossing a board book into your lap)