Something that I wanted to note, but keep forgetting—many of Ava’s little speech quirks have gone away. I don’t know when it happened, but at least 3 months ago I noticed that she was not using a ‘t’ sound for a hard ‘c’ and now says animals instead of aminals, and vanilla instead of vamilla. It is so interesting how this evolves. But she still says el-phalents, which I adore. And cell-o-phone.

The other day, we were in the car and she asked me a question—I forget what it was. I began an answer, and then to help her understand, I asked her a question. All I got was a sigh and a dramatic “oh, I don’t know…” Every question that I asked thereafter was met with the same couldn’t be bothered response. This drove me nuts, and I allowed it to. Finally I pulled over and turned around and asked her if she knew why I was upset. She said no. I then launched into a commentary on people that just went through life not trying to learn and better themselves and how I thought that was so awful and that one of the most important things is to always want to improve your mind and your heart, and to sit there through life expecting the world to unfold before you was outrageous and entitled and as long as I had anything to say about it I would not allow that to occur in my presence. To her credit, she listened very carefully. Clearly I sent these words flying over her head, and she is one of the most curious kids I know, so perhaps it was not merited, but I could not help myself.

Carter went to the dentist on Monday. His tooth needs to be filled, but it will not be the disaster we had expected. The dentist said that it would take 5 minutes, max, so no anesthesia (no drilling, obviously). Thank god. He was SO good. Just lay there with his head in the dentist’s lap looking up at him with these huge fingers poking around in his mouth. He is such a trooper.

He likes to hide now. He thinks it is a riot. I do not.

He also likes to scream as loud as he can, often in a contest with Ava. This is usually in the car. They can be indistinguishable, and very very loud.

And he loves to run. When I take him out of the tub and set him down, he takes off, with me in pursuit, chasing him down with jammies and a diaper while he tears around at top speed, laughing with glee. And recently he started stomping without holding on to something. He used to do this while he held on to a chair or the bed or something his height—he would hold on and stomp stomp stomp stomp as fast as he could—essentially running in place. Now he can do it by himself, so often he will come into the kitchen, get my attention and then do this little stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp dance/jig thing for me with the biggest smile on his face. And then he claps for himself.

Ava has figured out how to pile up a bunch of pillows so that she can dive off the couch into them.

Tomorrow is her ‘special day’ at school. There is a bucket that is sent home with each kid in rotation, and we are supposed to bring in 2 photos, a book and snack. She had a hard time choosing the photos, but we got that squared away. The bucket was a total source of conflict for the kids, so that went on top of the refrigerator, and then picking a book was impossible. We have 4, and I hope the teacher does not mind. And then there was snack. My suggestion is that you always have a back-up plan (read: store-bought), should your great idea of making pumpkin bread result in something that makes you say “aaaaahhhh” while holding your mouth open so that the bread touches as little of the inside of your mouth as possible before you can get to the garbage can. At 6:45 PM (bedtime) I was making an emergency batch of pumpkin cookies. Thank GOD I had purchased an extra can of pumpkin goo. They turned out fine. I have no idea what went wrong with the bread—I did follow the recipe, I know that—it was a simple quickbread in theory. Whatever. It all worked out.

For all of the RealSimple readers out there:

Salad Spinner

Original Use: Flinging excess water from dark leafy greens.

Ah-ha! Use: Sit and Spin—remove the top, invert it and sit on it (provided you fit—Moms need not try) and spin and spin and spin. Reserve the bottom for later use as a basket for inside basketball. Who needs Hasbro or Mattel?