The word is up. Up.

Q2 sometimes likes to go visit C4's room. This is understandable, as she wanted to go pet the dogs.

But, of course, her action upset C4 greatly. Not exactly sure how much of a kerfuffle there was, but C4 put her rightious anger to good use. She made a sign (all by herself! No help on spelling or words!) for her door to keep Q2 out. It read thusly:

Q2, in yours

That would work beautifully if Q2 could read. Really, it would.

I'm not in Amsterdam

But C39 is. Or he will be in a few hours. So, today I went to work in the morning, and spent the afternoon with the girls, which I don't usually do with them on Thursdays.

Thursdays are farmer's market day. We walked over, and first thing bought two HUGE cups of sorbet. Banana & Pineapple. The owner of that stall has a racket going on. Her "small" portions were huge! they looked about 2 cups of sorbet. And $4! The kids each needed about 1/3 of that portion, tops. So about 2/3 of the sorbet melted. But, they enjoyed it, as you can see:



Then we played a bit up at the park, when we weren't playing hide and seek, toddler style (they stand off to the side but 100% in view, I count and when I get to 10 I ask where are my girls and they run back), they were practicing and rolling their tounges:



After seeing 3 MARC trains and one empty freight train, and petting a miniature red poodle (adorable, even if it was a toy poodle), a white and black puppy, and a large dog of some sort, we walked home. Q2 had an accident on the way (oops, we had been out for a while), stripping her down and putting her back in the stroller naked. Her choice, not mine. Well, it was my choice to have her strapped down rather than running down the street nakie. But her choice to be naked. Until C4 got out of the stroller to walk. Then Q2 decided she wanted to get out. And that getting dressed would be an acceptable situation if it got her out of the stroller.

We approached a sign ... and C4 read it, just like that!



I had no idea she knew how to read 3 of those 4 words! I was impressed.

The rest of the walk was unimpressive. One minor fall. A little crying. But we got home, ate dinner, watched Mary Poppins for a few moments and then ... putting them to bed alone.

Bath was smooth. C4 got out first, dressed, and read in her bed, while I took Q2 out of bed, dressed her, and put her to bed. I stayed with Q2 for a bit, visited C4 and told her I'd be back, returned to Q4, stayed for a few minutes and told her I had to lock the door and she asked if I'd be back, I said yes, but kept going ... C4 was already asleep, and I think Q2 was asleep before I got downstairs.

How do you spell ...

C3 loves typing on the computer ... she spells what she can, and then asks us the rest. Her favorite topics? you guessed it ... dogs and puppies! But she likes to spell out all our names, too. And make up words. Fun. Today she was spelling her sister's name.

Unnatural affinity?

While we've long known that C3 has a very strong attachment to dogs, it has been only recently (the last few months? 6 months? I am not really sure) that Q2 has been professing a special love for certain animals.

Specifically, turtles and sheep. I am not sure why except that they are not dogs, and nobody can love dogs like C3 does, so it would have to be another animal. Or two.

So, tonight we were looking at one of those black on white or white on black shadow books of animals and their babies. We'd look at a picture, identify the animal, and then identify the babies. Like ... dog and puppies. Easy.

E37: What's this (pointing to a sheep)?
Q2: A Baa-baa!
E37: Yes, a sheep! And what is the name of these guys (pointing to the lambs)?
Q2: Q2!

Which of course made us all laugh, so for the rest of the book, all the little animals became Q2 ... the piglets, the kittens, the calf. And was professed with a huge laugh and ginormous smile.

New words

I don't know if it is a 3-year-old thing, or what, but we talk about poop and peep a lot. Even when we aren't actually talking about it.

C3: Daddy? Do you pooh with your penis?
C38: No, that's not how that works.
C3: Do you pooh with a pooh-nis?
Stiffled laughter. Clever, no?