Author: admin

we had our first really good frost last night. This morning Caity wanted to go out and ride her trike on the deck in her jammies. I look around and the sliding door is wide open and she’s out on the deck. I quickly bring her back in and close the door. Not happy with this, she protests, “I wanna ride bike.” I explain it’s far too cold but she’s not happy with that answer…so I dutifully take her back outside to experience what I’m talking about. I take her hand and put it on the cold metal of her handlebar. She starts to understand and goes back in with me but is still a bit downtrodden with the shooting down of her great inspiration. looking out the window wistfully she points to the grass white with frost and asks, “what’s that?” I explain, “that’s frost, it happens when water on the grass freezes. it’s called f r o s t.” “oh” she says, “frost, ya frost.” then she pipes up with the authoritative statement, “Anna did it.”

I did not see that coming and for a while I’ve been using that line as a joke to great effect….”Anna did it.”

The day before, I was trying to blow Caity’s sniffly nose and trying to explain the difference between sucking air in and blowing it out your nose. for the life of me I couldn’t figure out how to communicate the difference so she would understand. She kept sniffing in more deeply thinking she was doing the same thing as I was demonstrating. somehow it didn’t make sense in her mind to send all that snott out into the world. Surely I must be telling her to suck it all back inside as best she could.

Today Kendra went to 3:00 people with Caleb and Tallie. We made a special T-Shirt with Tallie’s drawing for Spider. Home alone with Karina and Cait and Cait’s napping so need to do some activities with Karina. She’s all into setting up a tea party and before I even get involved she has started setting up tea on the downstairs round table. So she gets her dresses all laid out down there, teacups, plates, plastic foods and buiscuits all set up and then says “what else we do?”

I suggest we make special name cards for the table and we enjoy tea-staining the edges. while I’m finishing off some touches she moves on to drawing a picture with markers. she spends all of 4 to 5 minutes on the drawing and says, “look dad.” “wow, I really like that drawing” I said. “shanks, i weay wock hod on it.” How our perceptions do change and expectations for what represents our best. If only I could capture more of that spontaneous self assuredness. It’s a precious thing.

The other day Karina is on the toilet going through a big flush with somewhat runny stool. Caity decides to check out the action since she’s quite excited by her own achievements in this area. She looks behind Karina with her head over the bowl studying it intently and noticing how all the water looks brown and lumpy…like she filled it all up. Quite impressed she says, “wow, great poop Anna.” Karina swells her chest a little, looks over her shoulder and quite nonchalantly responds, “yeah, shanks” with an air of superiority that assumes that any lesser qualified poopers in the world ought to stop and recognize her natural gifting in this area.