A long and rambling post

I find it so fascinating to listen to children point out the things they observe in the most mundane situations - driving in the car through town, looking out the living room window, looking through books they've heard a million times, etc. Children are not so distracted by their thoughts and their to-do lists the way adults are, and they take the time to notice the smallest of things around them, things that adults usually tune out or don't focus on. Lately Julia has surprised me with things she has been observing and the connections and conclusions she's making, because she's noticing things I haven't actually pointed out or explained to her. Such as:

JULIA: Hey Mom, look, that church is covered in vines!
ME: (Realizing I had never actually noticed the vines.) Wow! You're right. Julia, how do you know what vines are?
JULIA: Because of the book the priest gave her (meaning Madeleine)...
ME: (Remembering the book is called The Man and the Vine and is about a man turning grapes into wine and blessing the wine to become communion, and also realizing we read this book over two months ago): Oh yeah, that's right!

Or:

JULIA: (pointing to a gray Toyota Corolla in front of us as we drove down Highland Ave) Mom, look, that car looks just like Neva's car!

I had actually made the same observation myself, since the car in front of us was the same make, model, and color as our friend Neva's car, but it had never crossed my mind that Julia had paid attention to what Neva's car looks like. Similarly, the other day when we arrived home from school, Julia pointed to a black car parked in our neighbor's side of the driveway and observed, "Mom, I think Maisie is probably over having a play-date with Wyatt, because that looks like Noelle's car in their driveway." So not only can she identify what type of car OUR friend drives, but she actually knows the car that our neighbor's friend drives. She was absolutely right - Noelle and her daughter Maisie were over visiting our neighbor friends.

She also likes to come up with advice for how we should go about doing things, now that she's watched us go through various motions enough times to get the way it all works: "Mom, I just got an idea in my head! We should pack BABY TOYS to bring on our trip to Vermont, so that the babies have something to play with! Isn't that a great idea that I got in my head?"

She's not always spot-on in her mental process, however. Sometimes her atempts at deductive reasoning lead her down an interesting path. She asked me this morning if I could color the "kitty skull" in her Sesame Street coloring book, and pointed out other skulls to me - Ernie skulls, Bert skulls, etc. Sounds kind of morose, but the "skulls" are actually just pictures of heads without bodies:





So, just to clear things up: if it's a floating head with no body attached, it's a skull. If it's a headless body, it's a loser.

Now, onto a totally unrelated topic. Madeleine has been loving her new Leapfrog Learning table, probably because it gives her the opportunity to grab onto various buttons, and to flap her hands around wildly whacking things, two of her favorite activities:





However, somebody else gets a little envious whenever any new toys come into the house and wants to have firsts dibs on them:


There is Julia, actually grabbing Madeleine's hand to hold it still because Madeleine's pressing of the piano keys was interrupting the sounds from the buttons Julia was trying to manipulate. Or, in Julia's words, when I told her to stop grabbing Madeleine's hands, "No, but Mom, I'm holding her hands because she's DISTRACTING me from playing my music!"