Hanging out with my friends

Sunday afternoon the girls and I were reading stories on the couch; after I finished Claire started playing with my hair, and decided she needed a clip. I brought the box with all of the girl's clips so she could choose the one she wanted. She messed with one for a while, unable to convince it to hold as much hair as she thought it should. She finally got it to stay in, and supplemented with another clip. And then, her creative juices started flowing. Why stop at one clip, or two clips? She dug out clip after clip, lining my face with bright colors, flowers, and bows. The style was finished with two ponytails hanging down over my shoulders.

"Oh, Julie," she said in soft tones, as if her heart was aching with too much beauty, "I just love to look at you. You are so stylish! You are the stylishist one."

Today Cole and I went for a walk to the grocery store. He ran up and down the hall as I was getting ready to leave, chanting, "Go! Go! Go!" From the stroller his mittened hand shot out to mark points of interest along the street. "Car! Car!! Wow. Wow! Doggie! Woof woof, woof woof. Doggie!" When we got home he was eager to show that he knew the routine; he began unloading groceries from their sacks and handing them to me, or carrying them to where he thought they went in the kitchen. "Doo-dee, Doo-dee," he would call to me, holding out a container of yogurt, or a bag of lettuce. And so I could see his genius at grocery classification he'd call out the name if he knew it: "Pepper! Yogurt! Milk!" After he stuffed the grocery bags back into their drawer, he had an idea for our next activity: "Eat, eat." He raced ahead of me around the kitchen trying to anticipate my every move. He opened the drawer where the kids' dishes are: "Plate, plate." He dashed to point to the microwave when it was beeping: "Bell, bell!" He ate his leftovers and then I gave him some fruit. He happily identified bananas and grapes, but didn't look so thrilled about what he called "pepper." I told him it wasn't pepper, but mango. He picked around it for a while, but once he tried a bite he was hooked. When his bowl was empty he asked, "Mamo, mamo?" Now it's about time to put him down for a nap, but I'm reluctant to loose his eager companionship.