Birthday countdown, towers and astronauts

Julia is eagerly awaiting her birthday tomorrow and is really excited to turn five. She has kept such specific track of her age over the past year that she can refer back to points in the past and give me her age to the quarter of a year. For instance, while watching "Curious George" this morning, she told me, "Mommy, I've only seen this 'Curious George' one time before! I think it must be a new one, because I didn't see it when I was three, and I only saw it one time when I think I was four and a quarter or four and a half."

Good thing she's keeping track of such important matters.

Over the weekend, she discovered that since her birthday is coming up so soon, she is not actually four and three quarters as she has been telling everyone. During a dinner with some friends, the adults tried to come up with a more accurate fraction, although four and three hundred sixty-three-three hundred sixty-fifths was a bit much for her to understand. As I put her to bed that evening, I tried to simplify matters for her:

JULIA: Mama, but why downstairs did you say that I'm not really four and three-quarters?
ME: Well, because you're really older than four and three-quarters now. You're almost five. Your birthday is just a few days away. When you turn four and three-quarters, that means your birthday is three months away. Now you're more like four and eleven-twelfths. Even older than four and eleven-twelfths, really.
JULIA: (silent, pondering.) Well, Mama? Why didn't you ever tell me when I turned that?

Oh, boy. I suppose I should have been giving her a daily update on exactly what fraction describes her current age as of that day. What negligence.

Madeleine will soon be two and one-sixth years old, but there are times when she surprises me with abilities of a much older child. Today I walked into the living room to see that she had built this tower all by herself:



Pleased by my exuberantly impressed reaction on seeing her tower, Madeleine decided to tout her mad building skills. "I doing a great job the TOWER!" she exclaimed with glee.

She also did a great job the astronaut the other day, performing for our aforementioned dinner guests. Not only did she show off her twirling ability, but she was at the height of her drunken stagger-walk thanks to the dizziness inspired by her twirling:



I wonder how well she'll be able to do this when she's two and one quarter!