Cecilia, Spiders, and Cars

Ever since I bought some Simon & Garfunkel CDs to play in our new car's CD player, the kids have been obsessed with the various songs we've been listening to. Not only do they request specific songs every time we get in the car, but they're also singing the music around the house. Julia's current favorite is "Cecilia," which she frequently has in her head even when we're not in the car. As she put it: "Mom, did you know that I always have 'Cecilia' in my head and I feel like I'm listening to the REAL MUSIC? Like, I feel like I went inside my body, and I can hear the REAL song!" She is so enamored with this particular song that she asked me yesterday, when our baby-sitter showed up, if I can bring in the CD from the car the next time our baby-sitter comes over so that Julia can play "Cecilia" for Tamara. And, this being Julia, she of course needed to plan out every single detail: "And, Mama, I want to DANCE along to it, and I want to wear two big braids and a skirt, because I want my skirt to swirl around when I'm DANCING." Got it. It's a PLAN.

Meanwhile, since Tamara is not coming today, Julia decided on a non-skirt outfit. In addition to her obsession with "Cecilia," she continues to be obsessed with Halloween, and is heading off to her winter vacation camp dressed in a very spooky, Halloweeny outfit:



Seeing as one of the only bouts of snow we received in the past few months was days before Halloween, I suppose her outfit is more appropriate for "Snowflake Camp" than is the near 60-degree weather we're having today...

After getting dressed, Julia ran over to me and pointed to the spider descending on his heart-shaped spider web, inquiring, "Mama, this is kind of weird, but can you guess what this makes me think of?":



"Uh," I though, trying to imagine what was on her mind, "Valentine's Day?"
"Nope!" she exclaimed, "You have to guess what it is!"
"Um..." In trying to figure out what she might be thinking about, I decided to go with the old standby. "Cecilia?"
"YES!" she affirmed gleefully.
"Oh, I see," I said, finally catching on. "The heart is like, 'Cecilia, you're breaking my heart', right?"

Turns out Julia is way more astute than that. "Well, it's even like, this spider is moving down away from the girl spider, and I know that's a girl because she has a bow, so the other spider is going far away from her but he's sad because he loves her."

I got up to spin a web, when I come back to bed, some spider's taken my place...

Madeleine had other bugs on her mind. After watching a Curious George episode about an ant infestation, she was frantically certain that we had ants crawling all around our house.

"ANTS!" she shrieked, pointing at the white baseboard of our dining room, covered with little black smudges.
"Honey, those aren't ants," I reassured her.
Julia stepped in to explain: "Yeah, we watched the Curious George where there are LOTS of ants. I think there were, like, infinity, or maybe, like, one hundred ants." She paused to reflect for a moment, then modified her statement: "Well, I guess there must have been more than one hundred."

Madeleine may be scared of ants, and monsters, and sharks, and darkness, and the dinosaur, and the vacuum, and what not, but she sure shows her fearlessness when it comes to parking lots. After we dropped Julia off at camp this morning, Madeleine broke free of my grip and started a mad dash towards the parking lot. I was thoroughly relieved - and proud of her - when, after hearing me shout "STOP!", she ground to a halt right at the bottom of the ramp leading to the lot. I thought maybe if I explained the danger of running free in a parking lot, she would understand, so I told her, "Honey, you know what could happen if you're not holding a grown-up's hand in the parking lot? The cars might not see you, and a car could hit you and you'd get really hurt."

The word she zeroed in on was "hit." "Yeah, and we need to do NICE. Those cars are NEVER doin' nice. They're just HITTING. Those cars just HIT us. We need to BE NICE."

I can see that we're really on the same page here.