Pretty clever

I don't have any new pictures (not very good about taking them any more -- with two kids, the Kodak moments go by much more quickly) but I did have two interesting kid stories. First, about Louis. Louis can't really say any words yet. He communicates his desires by ear-piercing shrieks, and it is usually fairly easy to know what it is that he wants. Often, whatever Rosemary has. Or, it may be something more subtle that only those who spend a lot of time with him would discern. For example, if you turn on the radio in the car, he SHREIKS until you put on the "Music Together" CD that we've heard a million times (this is a slight improvement over Rosemary who would protest unless you played the same SONG over and over again). But I'm not really worried because he knows how to do a lot of things and what everything is for -- he can turn on the fan with the remote control, climb on the counter, turn on and off the laundry machine, brush his teeth, use a spoon, brush his hair, carry a step stool across the house to climb on top of the cabinet, etc. Today, he really impressed me. He had a boxed milk with a straw. The straw broke in half and so was no longer long enough to reach the milk on the bottom of the long box. Rosemary had another boxed drink. He saw her longer straw. So he took the longer straw, stuck in in half of his broken straw to make one long straw, and then used it to get the milk at the bottom of his drink. Pretty clever! Or at least as clever as those crows who dig for ants with straws.

As for Rosemary -- she is currently relishing her sterling image at school. She is really pretty difficult at home sometimes -- she is INCREDIBLY stubborn, even for a three and a half year old, I'm pretty sure. And she isn't great at telling us her feelings so she is a fairly unpredictable and cries a lot. There is a lot of head butting in the mornings as James, Rosemary and I are all NOT morning people. But none of this happens at school -- at school Rosemary's teacher calls her the "teachers assistant" and she spends a lot of time bossing around the other kids, making sure they follow the rules, etc. James took her to school this morning after we had about -- say NINE arguments about really very reasonable things like putting on her shoes, not breaking out in sobs about not getting orange juice, etc. Before he dropped her off he said, "I hope you are more cooperative with your teachers at school today than you were at home," and she said, "Ms. Melissa and Ms. Jennifer don't need to know about that." Indeed.