Sisters

Nov 2006: Vera had her 3.5 bd party, complete w half a cake. Lucy turned 5, w a pirate quest deluxe. Tunnels to explore, boats, planks, hooks.
For Halloween the Vera went as a bat (who could really fly as long as I carried her while she flapped her wings) and Lucy went as a pencil that could really write (if I held her upside down over something we didn't mind getting crayon all over.)
The kids said trick or treat at each house, and Vera always explained that she is 3 & 1/2, but she used to be 3. It was a pretty awesome night.
They are both very excited by Shel Silverstein's "Where the sidewalk ends" right now. Lucy adores kindergarten, but is baffled by the occasional cruelties of the social life.

Apr 2006 Vera B turns 3!

KB say: After six months of asking if it was her birthday yet, Vera finally turned 3. We have never seen her be so delighted. She had been rehearsing the circumstances of the event for months, from the guest list to the cake to the decorations. She proclaimed that now that she was 3, every day was going to be her birthday until she turned 4 next year. She is officially a 'big girl," and has voluntarily decided to do many things that "big girls" do: set the table, use the potty without help, let us brush her teeth with minty toothpaste (this was a big one). She even attempted to use a pacifier at bedtime, because that's what "big girls" like Lucy do. We disabused her of that notion. She was very afraid that a friend of Lucy's would call her a baby, which she apparently did a month ago. She asked for some assertiveness training, and now she tells everyone she is not a baby, she is 3.

Lucy had been developing a bit of reluctance about reading, particularly when it involved workbooks. She and Kate were making piles of gravel in the driveway and Kate began making them into letters.
"What are you doing?"
"You'll see."
"That looks like the letter M."
"Uh huh."
etc. etc. She began decoding Mama's "secret messages" and reading words--at first 3- and 4- letter words, then whole sentences, and creating her own "secret words." But she wasn't really aware of what she was doing, until Kate wrote out "You can read." She sounded out the sentence, read it aloud several times, and slowly became aware of what it meant. The glow of pride gradually spread from her brain to her fingertips.
Spot has been persistent about playing word games and helping her read words and make up sentences with them, which she loves, and through this she is slowly gaining confidence in her ability to read. She especially loves reading books to Vera, and Vera loves it when Lucy reads to her.

In other news, Vera can use the toilet independently, but before her transformation into a "big girl" she still liked to have someone around for moral support. She called to Kate to come and help her off the toilet. Kate didn't respond right away, so she started singing a variant on one of her music class songs: "Hello, here we go, it's fun to crap with you; hello, here we go, it's fun to crap with you . . ."
She loves making up new lyrics that even rhyme to songs she already knows.

Jan 2006: Lucy says her favorite thing about the holidays is sitting by the fire and talking about the year gone by. Vera wants to know why people say "mupp".

1 Nov 2005, Dia de los Muertos: Since BON West demands an update, here we go.

After months of Vera saying "You'd better finish sewing my ladybug costume, mom" and Lucy saying, "I want to be a pencil," the day has come and gone.
On Friday, Lucy won an award: "Most Original Costume" in the Hampstead Mothers' Club. On Saturday we went trick or treating and it was snowing. On Monday we went again and it was in the 70s. Lucy, as a pencil, enjoyed being turned upside down to draw on things. Both of them enjoyed bringing in the loot.

Lucy found a power drill in the billiard room, and explained to John that it is for making holes in walls. John thought maybe he should move it to a
higher shelf.
Vera now delights in quietly doing things by herself--using the potty, putting on her night diaper, putting on pajamas.
Lucy completely demolished mom in a game of Monopoly, Jr., by buying up the board. We can tell whose genes she has.
Both of them think worms are cool and like to hold them.
They still think Halloween is the best holiday ever, but the day after Halloween, Lucy sighed and said, "I wish it was Christmas already."

Aug 2005: All headstands all the time.

May 2005: Vera turned two in April. She practiced blowing out candles and rehearsed the guest list nearly every day for a month before the event, and spent nearly two weeks opening her packages. She never wanted to open more than one a day. She continues to delight us with her unexpected humor, such as when she referred to the repressive regime of the diaper changing table as "Poopistan." She and Lucy remain good friends, and Vera's linguistic skills combine amusingly with Lucy's burgeoning rationality to make for some interesting sibling arguments. Lucy could probably make friends with just about anyone, however, since the first thing she does when we get to a playground is to approach the nearest kid, young or old, and make friends with him or her. Her frequent cry when we leave an empty playground on a cold or rainy day is, "No, we can't go, I haven't made any friends yet!"

31 Jan 2005: This weekend in NH we took the kids sledding. We pulled them around the yard in about 2 feet of powder for a while, then towed them down to the lake, then took them up and down the lake and across it (although Vera slept through a fair bit of that). Sometimes they rode in sleds, sometimes we carried them. They met a nice ice-fisherman. After that we went through the yard and about for a few more runs through the powder, then back inside for their naps, knowing they would be exhausted after all their exercise. A bit of typical parental confusion, that.

25 Jan 2005: Vera learned to do seat drops in gymnastics some months ago, where she bounces on the trampoline onto her bum , then hopefully back up again. She has taken to doing them everywhere, bed, sofa, hardwood floors. She is rapidly closing in on fluency in English, too. Lucy loves to take pictures, dance, and especially draw. Daddy loves to sleep.

22 nov 2004 Today kate was showing Vera pictures of animals, and asking the names. Vera got most of them, but when asked what an alligator was, she said it was a "tigeroo".

27 October 2004: Lucy and Vera are looking forward to trotting out their flower fairy personae for Halloween. And collecting candy, which is a rare event in their mostly sugar-free lives. Vera got her first taste of Halloween this year at "Boo at the Zoo" (at the Stone Zoo) in the form of a strawberry hard candy, which magically appeared in her hand after she mumbled "trick or treat" at her parents prompting. She just as quickly learned that old maxim about taking candy from a baby when, no sooner had she painstakingly unwrapped the candy, sniffed it, and tentatively licked it, when the mouthwatering delicacy was rudely ripped from her hands (choking hazard). She was compensated with a chocolate cream-filled marshmallow pumpkin "peep," which proved too much even for her sweet tooth. Lucy, who has an unlimited sweet tooth, stands to do well this Halloween. Fortunately, both kids like to brush their teeth. On another front, today at gymnastics class Lucy was running back and forth full speed and announced that she was "fast as a clam". And as I like to say, smart as one too. Luckily also Happy as a whole bed of clams.

18 oct 2004: Lucy and Vera have a house under contract. They are finally going to escape the city and move to NH. For more details, email me. Otherwise, come to the housewarming party, whenever we have it.