Halloween decorations, siblings, etc.

Our neighbor has some pretty wild lawn decorations around the holidays, with Halloween particularly impressive. At the moment he has a huge black vampire bat with glowing red eyes on his fence, a huge carful of ghosts on his lawn, and a glowing orange pumpkin snowman, among many other decorations.

So when I get home after picking the kids up every day, we of course have to go see them. Every day. We walk over and walk around and around them, and Kate touches the ghost car, and Jack touches the pumpkin snowman, and they say hi to everything. I have to admit the bat thing is kind of scary, but not to them as near as I can tell.

Kate, in fact, says "Hi!" and "Bye" to it as we arrive and leave. And to the stone bunny figure on the guy's lawn (which is not, incidentally, a Halloween decoration; it's just a stone bunny).

The other night, Jack had gone upstairs for some such reason, while Kate was looking at the decorations out the kitchen window. And talking to them.

"Hi, Bat!" she said happily. A pause, as though waiting for it to answer. And then: "Hi, Bat!" Then laughter. "He funny!" she said. "He funny....." More laughter, from her and from me. Not, one presumes, the bat.

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The other day after dinner Kate was talking to herself. Her reflection, that is. In her spoon.

Normally she uses plastic spoons, but I had given her a real spoon. And there she was, sitting at the table, holding it, looking at herself.

"Hi, Kate!" she said. "Hi!" Pause. "Hi, Kate!" Then she went off on a little monologue, something about Mommy, I believe. She seemed quite happy to be having this conversation with herself.


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There are times when Jack doesn't want to be bothered with Kate. And other times when he's the sweetest big brother in the world.

Yesterday it was at the end of dinner, and Jack wanted mixed fruit or somesuch, and of course once he mentioned it, she did too. And I wanted Kate to eat more of her dinner, and wasn't having any of her "No!" stuff. And then she wanted more Orange Juice, and I wanted her to say Please. And it wasn't going well and she was getting upset and I was getting frustrated.

Jack, who was sitting in his spot at the table, leaned over to her and grabbed her hand, trying to get her attention. "Kate," he said gently. Then, plaintively, to get her to look at him, "Kate!" She looked at him through her little mini-tantrum. "You have to say 'Please,' Kate. Kate! Say 'Please,' to get more orange juice. 'Please.'"

Kate quieted down. She said please. She got more orange juice.

Today she found an Elmo coloring book in the car. She held it on the way home. Jack said, "Kate, do you want to color in that together when we get home?" She said, "Yes." And so they did.