Make Way for Ducklings

Julia recently received a CD of "Make Way for Ducklings," the well-known (to Bostonians, that is) children's story about ducks making their home in the Charles River. This recording is a reading of the story, done by Ted Kennedy, with accompanying music written by the late great Daniel Pinkham, and she has been really into it. She has asked the past three days in a row to listen to it, and even took her breakfast into the living room yesterday morning so she could sit by the speakers and hear it better. While we were listening to it together one afternoon, she turned to me and said, "Mommy, um, Kennedy says 'scootahs'!" That led to a discussion of the Boston accent, and I began pointing out other words, as we heard them, that were pronounced with this characteristic accent: "Mistah Mallahd," "Bawston," "wahtah," etc. Last evening when we sat down to our pasta dinner, Julia said to me, "Mommy! If you had a Boston accent, you would say pawsta!"

We definitely have to make way for Madeleine lately. She is all over - and into - everything! She is now pulling up to standing on anything she can get at, and even stood on her own for several seconds yesterday before easing herself down to sitting. And unfortunately, she seems to think that "no!" means stop, pause and look at the person saying no for a minute, flash them a delighted smile, then resume getting her hands all over the forbidden object. She is also cruising (aka walking while holding onto furniture, the wall, etc) pretty readily at this point, which means she's really going to be trouble! Here are a few photos of her cruising along while holding the beam underneath our dining room table; you can see her position slowly changing as she made her way from one end of the table to the other (you can use the background chairs for reference, since my photo-taking is a little lopsided):







And when she's not playing under that table, she's hanging out under this one:



And finally, since Julia has enjoyed listening to "Make Way for Ducklings" without physically seeing the book and its pictures, I thought she might be ready to graduate to a sparsely illustrated chapter book. We recently took a trip to the library to check out "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" (or, if Ted Kennedy had recorded a reading of it, "Chahlie and the Chawcolate Factory") and Ethan and I have been alternating chapters at night. Julia, so far, is really interested in the book, which is great since it's a childhood favorite of both her parents. It's interesting, though; Julia is very much a rule-follower (almost in an obsessive way - she has trouble breaking the routine even if we tell her it's okay on certain occasions) and she gets really worried when other people appear to be ignoring the rules. (As my friend Neva and I joke, she needs a t-shirt that says "Future Hall Monitor.") So throughout the story, Julia has been chiming in with her concerns: "Mommy, but isn't chocolate junky? Then why do they want to be eating it?" "Mommy, but I think Charlie should be going to bed," and so forth. Just WAIT until she hears the things those other wild and crazy golden-ticket receivers do at Willy Wonka's chocolate factory...