1. Genevieve has been playing constantly with a tiny dog from one of her Little People playsets. She’s named him “Woofy Woofy” and spends a good chunk of each day feeding him(toy food from the girls’ kitchen, putting to sleep on one of the girls’ chairs, and especially hiding him in the couch cushions, then rediscovering him.
2. For her part, Julia has been enamored since Christmas with Pinky Pie, a My Little Pony which she carefully grooms, puts to sleep in a special “stable” made from of a toy bin and blankets in their room, and of course carries around nonstop.
3. Family friends recently gave us some hand-me-down clothes for Vivi, and she is besotted with a pair of red track pants. They’re lined, so they’re extremely warm, but they also make an interesting “swishswish” sound as she walks – so much so that she alters her gait to make the legs of the pants rub as much and as loudly as possible.
4. Both girls have revived a weird game of pretending that the last few bites of food at any meal is actually gum. The chew that mouthful up endlessly and murmur in a weird voice, “Look – I have gum.” Julia also pauses dramatically, opens her mouth, blows out, and then asks, “Did you see that big bubble?”
5. Genevieve insists on going out to the bus stop with me and Julia every day, no matter the weather, mostly to soak up the big-girl antics of Julia and the two first graders who also wait with us. Lately, Vivi has started getting in line when the other girls are getting on the bus, too. So far, she hasn’t actually walked up to the bus door – and she always turns away when the bus driver waves to her.
6. Genevieve is pretty much the only person in the house who really likes our grumpy old cat, Sabine, and she really likes her. She’ll interrupt her playing to go find Sabine, whom she calls “little buddy,” and just about goes over the moon if the cat deigns to sniff her face when she leans in. “Dabean gave me a kitsh!” (She also loves loves loves our friends’ cat, Juno.)
7. Many nights, Julia makes a point of going to the window to wish upon a star – which is sometimes an actual star but has also been the light on a nearby radio tower and even the wing lights on a descending airplane. She tries not to reveal what she’s wishing each night, but eventually she reveals that she’s wishing we could go to Disneyworld.
8. If she’s in an even passably good mood, Genevieve is probably singing a made-up song about whatever she’s doing – playing, reading a book, going to the bathroom, eating a snack. The songs – which I really have to try to record – are about 60% actual words and 40% crazy made-up nonsense – though Vivi also makes a point to find rhymes, some of which are positively inspired.
9. The girls continue their habit of eating in parallel: eating the same items at the same time, and pausing as needed for one to catch up with the other. This morning, I told them something, and they froze in identical poses as they listened: both were lifting their milk cups with their left hands and holding their slices of toast in their right hands. It was an eerie effect.
10. A few weeks ago, Genevieve invented the phrase “beebee baba” as nonsense to fill in any sentence or question. “What’re you doing, Viver?” “Oh, nuffin. Just beebee baba.” Now both girls are gleefully using the phrase at all times. They have entire conversations in which the only “words” are variants on “beebee baba.”
I love the imaginations of children. They turn anything into a toy and make everything a game.