Autumn clips

Evelyn has lately been practicing grabbing placemats off the table and stuffing them in her mouth. Watch your cereal bowl, Dad! She entertains us with giggles and even the raspberries. In other news, she has started napping in a bed!

"Wouldn't it be nice if you had three arms, Mom - two for nursing and one for sorting beads?"

"Mom, the motorcycles didn't wake Evelyn up going down the stairs because they put their silencers on."

We note in the weather page that a storm is coming to Eureka. Malcolm suggests, "We should hunker down but don't need to evacuate, I'd say." (words he picked up reading about Texans preparing for hurricane Gustav last month)

"Mom, I want to show you something amazing. Did you know that leeks have growth rings?"

Describing to me how to get to his music lessons, Malcolm said, "turn behind Walgreens, then take a left and the road curves around to her house." (OK, so it was Longs Drugs instead of Walgreens but otherwise right on).

Malcolm has for some time enjoyed typing his ABC's in different colors on the computer, asking me to change the color between every letter. With Evelyn in my arms, this got tricky so I showed him how to select new colors with the mouse in Word himself. He finished up and wanted to save it, but I was changing a diaper or nursing so I instructed him from a distance "click on the red X in the corner, then click on Yes in the box that pops up with the yellow exclamation point." It felt odd hearing myself talking in those terms to him and even more peculiar when he pulled it off.