Madeleine's first picture was all in brown, kind of like Anja's birthday card.
"Look, Mama! I'm making FLOWERS!" she announced:
Oh. Okay. Flowers. NOT a penis and hairy testicles, as I would have assumed.
Once the choir rehearsal began, the girls continued their drawings, and didn't pay any mind to the music going on, feeling perfectly comfortable interrupting me to announce what it was they were drawing.
Or to ask permission for things like this:
MADELEINE: Um, Mama? Is it okay if I draw a TOILET?
Then, once she was happily drawing her toilet, Madeleine began loudly talking about her drawing, so that our beautiful carols about the innocent Christ child were punctuated with exclamations from behind me.
CHOIR: Soft and sweet, doth entreat, sweetest angel voices...
MADELEINE: I made a toilet. With POOP!
CHOIR: Christ is born, the choirs are singing...
MADELEINE: I drew POOP in my TOILET!
CHOIR: Till the air everywhere now with joy is ringing...
MADELEINE: It's POOP! I made a POOP MAN!
CHOIR: Here let all, great and small, kneel in awe and wonder...
MADELEINE: Poop!
CHOIR: Love Him who with love is yearning...
MADELEINE: POOOOOP!
It was not distracting at all.
Nor was it distracting when Julia and Madeleine got into an argument over the brown marker. This is big time problems, folks. Two kids, and only one brown marker. Madeleine had sole use of the brown marker, presumably to draw her poop, and Julia needed it to color in the stem of the pumpkin she was making for me. Madeleine wouldn't budge on her all-brown decorations and couldn't relinquish the marker. Julia found this unacceptable. So while my fellow choir members and I sang about peace and joy and spreading love, the girls fought bitterly over the right to the brown marker while I made frantic hand gestures at them. In the end, Madeleine allowed her sister the two seconds necessary to color the pumpkin stem, and all was right with the world.
Madeleine eventually branched out and opted for some other colors, creating pictures such as this lively drawing of "a lifeguard, sitting in her chair, that is GINNY!" (By which she means that the lifeguard, not the chair, is Ginny. And by Ginny she would mean Ginny Weasley from "Harry Potter.")
Madeleine has, of late, abandoned her Emily Binx kick and has instead embraced Ginny Weasley. So much so, in fact, that in the latter half of my choir rehearsal, Madeleine was Ginny locked in the Chamber of Secrets, hiding behind the furthest choir row, calling for someone to come and free her. Needless to say, we left shortly afterwards, not making it to the end of the rehearsal. (Fortunately, the choir director is well aware that my attendance at rehearsals is limited to the length of time that the kids can actually sit still.)
Julia had no tolerance for Madeleine's inane Harry Potter fascination on the car ride home. (Ironic, no??)
MADELEINE: Okay, I'm still Ginny! (turning to Julia) Um, Hermione?
JULIA: (cranky) I'm not PLAYING, Madeleine.
WHAT? Julia passed up an opportunity to be Hermione? Now that's something I never thought I'd see. Could it be she's branching out from her own Harry Potter obsession? Just in time for Madeleine to enter one?? Can't we just be in the same obsession at the same time here, girls?
Luckily, now that we are home, the girls are both engaged in their own fantasy play. For Julia, it's Gallop Time, during which "anything can happen!" And Madeleine is busy setting up shop at her brand new restaurant.
MADELEINE: So, do you want to come to "Cafe Sol Azteca Christmas?" It's a little thingy...that has...LOTS of things! And I do have LOTS of drinks. This is the coffee maker, and...and...(looking around) and...the ORANGE does make lots of juice!
Anything can happen!
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