Blue has a lot of great books. Some of our favorites came from Granty and from Auntie Becky; they are our champion book-givers. Granty tends to find gorgeous, arty, interesting books, and Becky finds unusual, quirky books. I think my favorite one from Granty is Crossing by Philip Booth. It's absolutely gorgeous and the poetry flows from page to page. Plus, it's about trains, so it's very exciting! One of the most interesting books Becky got us is Who Needs Donuts by Mark Alan Stamaty. The story is very odd; Blue likes to chant the motto with me, "Who needs donuts when you've got love?" The illustrations are elaborate, dense and crazy, kindof R. Crumb-ish, and when Blue is older I'm sure he'll spend lots of time examining them and picking out oddities. It's a very, very odd book and we like it a lot.

My personal favorite, also from Becky, is Giraffes Can't Dance. It is one of those books that chokes me up every time I read it. It's so beautiful. Does anyone else out there have this one?

Right now, all Blue wants to read every night is Sally the Runaway Monkey (remember that one, Mother and Carlye?) and it's long, so we don't get to any of the other books lately. Sally the Runaway Monkey is quite a long book, but I'm pretty sure I have it at least half memorized now.

I was emailing back and forth with my mom today about Halloween costumes and she sent me this picture.

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Yesterday when I picked Blue up from school he was speaking in falsetto range. When pressed for the reason, he told me he was Miss Piggy. Upon further questioning, Miss Piggy told me that she lived in the Muppet Movie, she liked to wear pink princess dresses, and she loved Kermit the Frog.

He kept it up for two hours, but quit before I fired up the videocamera.

We stopped by a store on our way to a playground; I was trying not to laugh as he trailed me prancing on his tiptoes, talking in this weirdly fake, super-high voice about princess dresses and Kermit. People have a hard enough time sussing out whether he's a boy or a girl without these complications!

Further information has come to light on the peanut butter issue; click on my "organic" tag for an easy way to get back to that post.

Blue is doing so well at school! Bear in mind that this is a play-based program, so "doing well" means building relationships with others, learning to cooperate, getting into "deep play" where the imagination and creativity rule, and learning to express himself and get his needs met nonviolently. He is opening up and doing wonderfully at all these things. He is also doing better with transitions and routine; the school program has only a few transitions (from play time to snack time, from indoors to outdoors, from play time to potpourri to shoes, socks & clothing time to gate) so that the kids can spend as much time in deep play as possible. But at first, each transition was pretty hard for Blue. He is definitely on the stubborn, self-directed side, and his resistance to things he doesn't want to do is strong. He had to be carried screaming into the classroom more than once at first--actually I don't know how many times and I don't even want to know. But the teachers told me yesterday that he is largely over that now. I am so excited for him, for all the growth and learning that's going on.

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Catherine Newman is the best.

http://wondertime.go.com/parent-to-parent/blogs/catherine-newman-blog/09152008.html

I didn't realize that peanut butter was high on the list of things that should be bought organic. Apparently peanuts retain a lot of pesticides.
We've been buying all-natural peanut butter but not necessarily organic. That changes today! Luckily Trader Joe's has yummy organic peanut butter that's not too expensive. We need it for Blue's daily PB&J.

Here's another video from June. Blue was playing the piano in Grandma's living room and I sortof sneaked up on him as he was composing a new song. I tried to transcribe the lyrics below. He still loves things that are sad, scary and angry. My little proto-goth.



How I wonder what you are
Now you know my ABC's
Next time won't you sing with me

Where you are the wild things
You look so sad before
And where you are the wild things
Oh that you're all sad and (unintelligible) tomorrow

Where you are the wild things are
You fall and around (?)
Because you're scary
Because you're scared and sad all the time

Here's a video from our trip to Idaho in June. The girl holding hands with Blue is Izzie, who spends a lot of time with my mom. Lucky Izzie! It's so cute how well she and Blue get along.



I love how the kids are interested in the dead bird and my mom is all "BARF." Kinda reminds me of this finslippy post:
http://www.finslippy.com/finslippy/2008/09/squirrels-and-also-the-apocalypse.html

Grandma's visit is already over! We had a great time. I was kinda busy but Blue and Grandma got to spend a lot of time together, and we got to ride two different trains up in Tilden Park:

Grandma is coming to visit today!!