Happy Father's Day!

Mini Makeover for Cora's Room

Before she was born, we painted Cora's room yellow - well, actually, long before she was even an idea we painted that room yellow, back when it was my sewing and writing room (and reading and sulking and evading writing room). And when it was transformed into a nursery we left it yellow. One wall has two very nice prints on it, one has a framed State Fair poster from the year Cora was conceived, one has a window, and above the crib it has always been blank. We've always wanted to have something there, and on the two weird triangular walls created by the dormer, but never got around to it.

Until today! Because this week I found something wonderful! Now her walls look like this:

The conventional phase

Here is a picture of the three bears Cora currently likes to sleep with. (Don't worry - no one has been kicked out of the crib! Cora is clearly more of an additive personality.) She decided early on that the pink bear is the mommy bear, the little cream-colored bear is the baby, and she was a little at a loss until she spotted the sweater-wearing bear in the music room and decided he would make a fine daddy to go with the other two.

While Cora is clearly most devoted at this stage in her life to the mommy-baby dyad (it is okay to go to bed without the daddy bear, but it is very much NOT OKAY to be without the other two together), she also likes to keep track of the daddies. She wants very much to know where they are, if they are not immediately visible.

And so we found ourselves a few weeks ago at a park with a little pond, complete with a mother duck and seven ducklings. "Baby duckies!" Cora shrieked with delight. We counted them. We talked about the mama duckie leading them around the pond. We talked about dibbling ("Oh! Where duckie go?!"). Then Cora asked the big question, the one I suspected was coming:

"Where daddy duckie?"
"Well, maybe there isn't one."
"Where daddy duckie?" (Sometimes Mama doesn't hear right the first time.)
"Some animals don't have daddies that stay with them."
"Where daddy duckie?" (Mama seems more dense than usual. Maybe more volume will help.)
"I don't know"
Pause.
"Mama, where daddy duckie?" (Let her see you're serious!)
Sigh. "Maybe he's at work."
Knowing smile and nod of approval. "Teacher. Daddy duckie teacher."

She at least has it down pretty good now that Peter Rabbit's mama has gone to the store and his daddy is in a pie (though I doubt she really gets it). She doesn't ask about the cats' parents, because they aren't baby cats. Arvo is a daddy cat and Emily is a mommy cat. Anything male and not clearly a baby is a daddy. Anything female and not clearly a baby is a mommy. She seems to have an intuitive grasp of what puberty does to the reproductive possibilities.

But, I do wish she weren't quite so conventional. Granted, most of the families we see come in the variety she currently finds most predictable, but not all. We know some two-mommy families, we know some no-daddy families, we know some adoptive families, we know some two-person households that we really really hope might one day be allowed to get legally married and maybe even become two-daddy families, too (not even necessarily in that order - we're not picky when it comes to our friends' happiness).

I suppose this part of being two and trying to figure out how the world works. And that there is comfort in finding the configuration you know replicated other places. (I remember the consternation of our friends' oldest girl when she spent the night at our house, at about age six, and realized that in our house the woman does the cooking! In her house, it is almost always the daddy who cooks dinner.)

As Cora becomes more aware of all the families we know, and all the ways families come together, I hope that her question to kids she meets will be something more along the lines of "Who's in your family?"

No Nap Wednesday

Instead, she gave the baby a bath.

These are Cora's current favorite pants. And her favorite sandals, which incidently came with a size 9mo outfit almost two years ago. Thankfully, on this day she allowed as how she might change out of her dinosaur PJ top (not the case on Tuesday).

Do you already know about this?

Over at Under the Mad Hat and a few other blogs, a couple of women put together a monthly list (posted the second Tuesday of the month) called Just Posts - a collection of posts from various other bloggers on various social topics big and small, global and personal. You can find the list from May here.

I enjoy the list; I've found my list of blogs I read expanding a little every month. This month I really liked the one about "whatever as a pay scale" and how the seemingly small topic of whether young girls who babysit feel comfortable (or not) stating their hourly rate is part of the larger topics of self-esteem, gender pay equity, and knowing your own worth.

Cool stuff.

Vocabulary

We watched a bit of the French Open final today. Federer missed a big shot and the TV camera caught him swearing, though without the sound.

Daddy: I think he just said a very bad Swiss word.

Mommy: Sacre bleu! (Okay, not Swiss. At all.)

Cora: Sacwe Bue! Sacwe Bue! (In that same scary gutteral voice she uses to drone the words "no bone...no bone" when we sing her The Riddle Song.) (I'm laughing now, thinking about it, but at night in the dark in her room it is some scary shit.)

I'm afraid all travel to French-speaking destinations is now impossible.

Beginning of Summer

Every once in a while my laptop simply refuses to download pictures from our digital camera, leaving grandmas from California to Hamburg gnashing their terrible teeth and rolling their terrible eyes and making snippy comments, which as we all know is even worse than the teeth-and-eyes business.

But, it requires waiting it out and catching the laptop unawares so that it just downloads the pictures without a fuss. You know, the old "Let's see what people are saying at PostSecret today...OR WE COULD DOWNLOAD PHOTOS!!!"

But it finally worked - two weeks of photos! Whew. So, here is a brief recap of summer thus far (which, for the record, not so much like summer, weatherwise). And then I'll tell you about Hell Week.

The princess dress-up clothes are still well-beloved - what I think is noteworthy about this instance is that all on her own, Cora has paired the Cinderella top with the cinderella skirt with the broom. She has never heard the story or seen the movie.

Cora, in the car, removing her shoes and socks - a pretty typical sight for us. This is on the way to her "dance recital" - the music and movement class, and the creative movement classes for the 4-6 year olds, put on a separate performance at a local park. When we were leaving, Cora put up a big protest about the car seat. Back into the house. No picnic. No performance. Sitting in the time-out chair thinking about what we want to do. Back out to the car. Into the car seat without incident. To the park...

We arrive in time to see her classmates finishing up the Teddy Bear dance. But, we still get to sit and watch the older kids, have our picnic, ride in the surrey bikes, see the waterfall, get ice cream, play in the rain, and see some nice dogs...

and a rainbow, too. As an English major, it is hard not to read too much into an evening like this one.

Cora in her little play tent.

Cora with her new set of dinnerware from her Colorado cousins and aunt & uncle. The cuppy had to be washed and filled with juice immediately, and the plate was used at dinner that night, which actually resulted in a huge amount of food being eaten by miss "oh no thank you, I had a strawberry for lunch and couldn't possibly eat another bite." Sweet!

In the next three photos, you see Cora with her new bath dolly from her cousins, aunt and uncle in Sacramento. Does she like her mermaid bath doll with the REALLY long hair? Well, let's just say...YES!

OK, so about Hell Week. Remember that week in college when you had a test in every class at once? Yeah - me neither, because I was an English major, but I heard about weeks like this from other people.

Chris is in the homestretch of his book (which is good, because his deadline is in two freaking weeks), I volunteered to type for him because his deadline is in two freaking weeks and he is a freaking Luddite when it comes to writing (and I mean that in the nicest, most supportive way possible), and...next week Cora's daycare is closed for vacation week. I like that they give everyone on staff a full week, I think that is humane and laudable, but I wish it were, oh, a week in July, say. So, Cora and I will be spending the week in various other activities and outings and such and while I know there will be many lovely and fun times, I also know that all in all it will be extremely exhausting. While we may go for walks in the park, it won't be a walk in the park, if you know what I mean.