carter likes to be a cat..."meow, meow meow...nummy num?" and then i hold out my hands in a cup shape, and he pretends to eat.

or, he runs up to you, growls "rrrrrraaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!" and then points to himself and says "bea." which = beast.

we are having a blast at the gym in the mornings when ava is in school--we swim for a bit, and then today tried a mommy and me exercise class. HA! i lay down on the mat and he was on my like a fly on peanutbutter. though he did manage to destroy the four foot tower of steps (the exercise-class step lifters that are about a foot square and stack nicely on each other) that the other kids made. he totally ignored them, then when it was sufficiently high enough he ran over and pushed it hard. BAM! CRASH! i think every mother in there had a heart attack.

the teacher said "your house must be really childproofed."

tomorrow we go to see laurie berkner in concert. the level of excitement is stratospheric. though i am afraid ava is assuming that we are going to MEET her. i have been trying to explain the magnitude of the event, particularly comparing it to the size of the audience at the lion king, but i think she is still holding out hope that we are going to go hang out with the band. but the neat thing is that she knows all of the lyrics.

i cannot even begin to capture all of the imaginative play -- it quickly escalates to the point where i have no idea who she is, where she is going, who is with her (deer? rabbits? her sister?), and what they are doing. but one of the easiest ways to entertain her is to provide her with a bunch of bowls/cups (plastic or paper, obviously), and some interesting dry goods (herbal teas were a big hit) and let her "feed" her deer/rabbits. this can occupy her for more than an hour.

today they washed the playground at school. with buckets of soapy water. when i arrived, they had a line of kids hauling buckets over to the window, passing them through to the kids outside, who were rinsing the playground. you could not have found 18 more completely absorbed and intent kids. ava finally came inside, found me, tackled me (her new form of greeting), and announced "mommy, i got DRENCHED!"

and yet, for all her verbiage, she has suddenly started employing double negatives. i know this is her effort to sort out grammar, but it is like nails on a chalkboard. real nails. not just fingernails. i wince every time. and all one can do is gently correct--i cannot explain that a double negative makes a positive. she has not taken algebra yet.

it will be over soon, i am sure. and then we will be on to the next challenge.

we went to the "Great Adirondack Corn Maze" the other day. it was so so so fun. nervewracking, as little kids can slip out of sight quickly, but totally worth it. more on that later, but my essay on the outing should be published soon.

in short, we will be returning.