Puddles

Today the girls received a treat in the mail: Easter dresses and Beanie babies from Yia-Yia. Madeleine was the happy recipient of a duck Beanie baby, whose name, according to the accompanying tag, is Puddles, and Julia received a sheep named Fleesia. The girls were so excited over their new toys that they actually opted to bring them along to the Town Hall today, on a trip to pick up a new dump sticker for our car. After our business in the treasurer's office, we played outside on the Town Hall green, where the kids had a blast. Madeleine carried Puddles along with her faithfully, running its body up and down everything in sight; the benches, the body parts of the bronze statues, a random girl's leg, what have you. In fact, in initiating contact (albeit unsolicited duckie-rubbing contact) with this other child, Madeleine made a new friend. This other girl must have been at least nine years old, but she was completely taken with Madeleine, and before I knew it, they were chatting away and Madeleine was even sharing her duck. I heard Madeleine proudly proclaim, "Her name is PUDDLES!" and I sat there amazed that she remembered the name I had read from the Beanie baby tag.

Julia was not in the mood to be social, and instead got lost inside her own head, playing a pretend game in which the circle of bronze statues holding hands were real children, her good friends, who had been turned to stone. She alternated between running off to various trees on the green, taking action to try and find a way to save the children, and sitting in the middle of the circle of statues with a solemn, contemplative look on her face. "Mama, were you wondering why I kept sitting down and looking so SAD?" she asked me as we walked towards the car on our way home. "Because I was pretending that all of my friends were real people who were turned to STONE," she informed me, delighted.

As I got the kids into the car, I said, "Madeleine, I saw you made a new friend and you even shared your duck! Do you remember your duckie's name?"

"Yeah. POND," she said with complete self-assurance.
"Pond!?" I teased her. "I thought it was Puddles!"
"Yeah, it's just PUDDLES," she corrected herself.

I opened the driver's side door and got into my seat, and as I was buckling myself, Madeleine piped up again, saying, "Yeah, her name is just Puddles, but I just called her LAKE!"


Puddles. Also knows as Pond, or Lake.

After dinner this evening, the girls were clambering all over Ethan, asking him to read books. At one point, Madeleine ran off to get a book, and trotted over to me, asking me to read it. I started to instruct her to ask Daddy, but when I saw that it was "The Man and the Vine," a very religious-themed book given to Madeleine by the priest who baptized her, I decided to go easy on him and spare him the discomfort of having to read it. As I read each page, Madeleine was her usual self, pointing out every last detail on every page and asking me to identify it. When we got to a page that displayed an Orthodox cross, I turned to her and asked, "Madeleine, what's that?" "Um, a CROSS!" she declared, and I sat there marveling at how intelligent and verbal she is.

Then I turned to the next page and pointed at the angel icon, asking her what it was. "Um, a GYNA," she stated. "Uh? A what?" I asked, somewhat uneasily. "A GYNA," she responded confidently. I watched Ethan attempting to repress a silent eruption of laughter on the couch across the room. "That's an angel, honey," I told her. I have to point out, I *think* that what was going on in her head was that it reminded her of an icon of Jesus, who she sometimes mistakenly calls "Genie." And I suspect in trying to recall the word "genie" she got mixed up and it came out "gyna." Either that, or she has got some truly disturbing religious associations. ("Atta girl!" I can hear Ethan thinking.)


The Gyna.

Speaking of disturbing, Julia has gone to some really crazy lengths to give me compliments lately. Not only does she continue to tell me how beautiful my pimples are, she actually told me yesterday morning, "Mommy, you have a really nice BUM." Then, with a mixture of goofy amusement and mild self-reproach, she added, "Even though your bum is where you go to the BATHROOM out of. But it's just such a BEAUTIFUL, round bum."

Wow. I guess I just really know how to rock my pimples and behind like a hot Mama.