Omar again

I made hamburgers tonight with a middle eastern bent including a ton of spices and a bunch of fresh green herbs and onions chopped up finely in them (they were delicious, I thought).  Ella, however, took a few bites around the edge and left most of hers on the plate.  I asked her if she didn't like it or if she wasn't hungry, and her reply, with complete sincerity, was "Well, Mom, did you know that Omar does not like hamburgers that have vegetables in them?" 

Little boy

I don't know if it's the clothes, the haircut, or the three syllable words but Dashiell sure seems like a little boy rather than a baby these days. 

The journal

I will admit that one of my favorite things about having kids is shopping for their clothes.  Ella has always had way more clothes than she needs each season because I just love buying them for her.  When I had Dash, everybody told me that shopping for a boy wouldn't be nearly as much fun as shopping for a girl, and while I imagine that will certainly be true in a few more years when he gets some opinions of his own, for now, I even find searching out cute and interesting boy clothes to be pretty enjoyable.  One of my favorite sources for both kids is Mini Boden, the British company, and they clearly know that I love them because we get a new catalog about every other week which Ella and I pore over together and talk about what we might want to order.  I just put in the fall order and the packages started arriving today.   Amongst the new digger shirts for Dash and owl hoodies for Ella was a bonus gift, a little journal.  Ella was of course immediately taken with it and sat right down at her art table to use it.  First she filled her name in on the front page.  Then she opened it to the middle and wrote a very important message:  Me and Leia are best friends.  And then, just so she could make sure that she can always find that page, she cut out a bookmark and glued it on to her message.

Ella and her journal entry

-ing

Dash is working on his advanced grammar skills and recently learned that you can add -ing to the end of words.  So a typical conversation now may be:

Dash:  Book!  Mo Book! <throws ten books in my lap>
Me:  You want to read a book?  Which one?
Dash:  <clearly annoyed that I have not started reading to him yet> Booking!  Mo booking!

Dash:  Song!  Mo Song!
Me:  Dash, we had to turn off the radio because we are home and the car is off.
Dash: <crying dramatically> Mo songing!  Mo songing!  Dashy mo songing!

Did I mention that he also calls himself Dashy in regular conversation?  Hilarious.

The flashlight

For several nights in a row recently, when I went in to kiss Ella before I went to bed, I found one of our flashlights turned on and pointed at Ella's doll, Yoko.  The first few nights, Ella had carefully lined up two small chairs in her room right next to each other so that Yoko was laying on one chair and the other could hold the flashlight pointed right at the doll.  After that, the installation  moved to the end of her bed, and then finally a few nights later, I found Yoko under the dresser with the light shining right on her.  I finally asked Ella what was going on because she was clearly setting up this scenario very carefully every night before she went to sleep.  With complete sincerity, she told me that Yoko is scared of the dark and the flashlight helps her sleep.  Ahhh, of course.

Yet more proof that we waste our money on toys. 

Common household items are always way more fun.

Spotlight on Yoko.

Small thief

Dash likes to find my purse when I'm not looking and pull out his favorite toys:  my wallet, my cell phone, and my sunglasses.  One of these days, this will end very poorly for me (I envision being in line at the grocery store with a full cart and realizing that my wallet is at at home, sitting in the toy wagon with the credit cards in the play kitchen freezer).  But darn it, if he isn't the cutest thing ever in my sunglasses. 



Got the glasses and sooo proud

Dash, big kid

Dash just started three mornings a week in the youngest classroom at Ella's school, where she is in the oldest class this year.  He has had a pretty good adjustment to school although some of the other children in his room are having a rougher (and totally normal of course) transition to the idea of preschool.  As happy as Dash usually is, the chorus of crying 1-year olds in his room seems to be enough to set him off sometimes.  His teachers assure me that it lasts about 30 seconds and then he is perfectly happy the rest of the day.

His reports of school are pretty funny.  He says the teachers names, then he says "Sit!" (because they sit in a circle at circle time), "Sing!" (because they sing songs at circle time), "Crack-ah!" (because they eat crackers at snack time), "Clean up!" (oh so important), and then "Sad!" (which for awhile I thought meant that he was sad at school but he says it with such glee that I now take it to mean that some of his new friends still do a fair bit of boo-hooing).

The school has walls of windows in all of the classrooms that look out onto the big outdoor play space, and the teachers tell me that Dash stands at the window of his room sometimes when Ella is outside and just waves and talks to her and happily says "Ey-yah! Ey-yah!". 

Today, the school director told me that on the playground, all the kids were out at the same time today, and that Dash was having a ball with the older kids from Ella's class.  They apparently would yell "Dash! Dash! Dash!" and he would dance, dance dance, and everyone thought it was HI-LARIOUS.  Oh, what I would have paid to see that.  He also apparently likes to line up with Ella's class when they get ready to go inside, confusing the teachers when they count 13 heads instead of 12.  They know now to look for the orange head that's shorter than the rest and to send him back with the crying chorus. 

I love that Ella and Dash are overlapping in school this year, mostly because they seem to love it so much themselves.

 First day of school this year,

Dash in the Playpals (18-24 month) room and Ella in PreK.