Madison
One of Claire's current favorites among her books is the Madeline anthology. After reading two or three of the stories and putting her to bed, I find myself thinking in Bemelmans-style rhyme. I think it might be fun to someday write a Philly version, sort of a parody. It would start something like this:

In an old house in Philly
covered up with graffitti
lived a plump, kindly mama
who made killer baked ziti.

In her tall, narrow house
lived six little girls
who used straightening irons
to flatten their curls.
With hair in tight buns
they went searching for fun
the bossiest one was Madison.

Mikayla, Mia, Casey and Karly
fell in line when Madison called for a parley
Only her sister Annemarie
was nearly as headstrong as she.

I'm not sure what sorts of Philly-style adventures I'd dream up for these girls. Any ideas? I'd definitely have plently of late-night waking. Miss Clavel always seems to be waking in the middle of the night sensing something is not right.

More bloggers IRL
This past weekend we hosted Rick and Rachel Capezza, who have been working at a camp in New Jersey for the summer. I'm just now realizing that we took no pictures! They had a camera, though probably won't be blogging for a while.

We showed them some of the sights (or is it sites?) in historic Philly, lunched on cheesesteaks and hung out talking a lot. Sunday was a little bit Episcopalian, a little bit low-church Presby. And of course, Claire had to share her Veggie passion with our guests with a showing of "Lyle, the Kindly Viking." She could watch that tape continuously all day if we let her.

Transit trials
I'm mostly back on track after an across-the-state trip last week with another mom and our two preschoolers. Pennsylvania never seemed large until we started planning for this trip to see a mutual friend who lives in New Castle, up in the northwest corner of the state near the Ohio border. I had some serious doubts that we could do the drive from Philly in less than like 10 hours because the kids would perpetually want us to stop.

My friend had a secret weapon. That's right, a portable DVD player. I'll admit that I used to moan every time I'd see an ad on TV for vehicles equipped with this device. "Great," I'd tell Joel, "just the way to guaratee you never have to actually speak to or interact with your children."

Well, I've revised my opinion a bit on that count. For fidgety toddlers on long rides, the technology can be a big blessing. My friend bought the DVD when her mother was dying from ovarian cancer and she needed to make regular 8+ hour drives to North Carolina with her toddler son. It kept her sane and prevented her son's motion sickness (so long as the player was below window level). When we had her son plus Claire in the back seat, they were far more content watching Elmo or Pooh than my attempts at a puppet show. The power struggles over toys also ended when a video played.

We also didn't need to make many stops. We did the 400+ mile trip in about 7 hours total, not too shabby for travel with kids aged 23 months and 3 and a half years. And I even got to do some needlework in transit! 

Pah-tee
My husband has been out of commission for two days with a migraine. We had hurricane-like weather and about 5 inches of rainfall today. And yet, I feel like celebrating. Can you guess why? Claire used the potty successfully tonight!

For months now, I've put her on the potty after her bath because she'd say she needed to go, then would not go. Tonight I set her on, left the room to get something, and came back to discover her success. Guess she's just shy. ;-)

Interpreting tongues

Claire's language skills are growing in leaps and bounds these days. She picks up several new words a day and mostly speaks in full sentences.

While she says some words very clearly, her annunciation on the whole still leaves a lot to be desired. Sometimes I think I need the spiritual gift of interpreting tongues to understand what she's saying.

Try this quiz to see how well you can understand Clairish.
Match the Clairish terms with English

1. deebah
2. buckeye
3. squeal
4. boggy ragit
5. critfer rogick
6. boo-boo bayies
7. may-ya-ya-ya-uhn
8. noo-noo
9. backles
10. teaser sauce
11. Moe ruck ogre
12. key backie
13. hanks duty
14. ditty buts

A. melon
B. Christopher Robin
C. clean blanket
D. squirrel
E. pretzels
F. sing "Running Over" again
G. blueberries
H. my hands are dirty
I. noodles
J. zebra
K. city bus
L. bunny rabbit
M. Ceasar salad dressing
N. butterfly

Vacation
I really needed that vacation from blogging. Sorry to leave you with such a non-shiny-happy-people sort of poem for over a month. Just wasn't motivated to get online much.

The reading contest we started at church has been a great success so far, with 43 kids participating. Obviously, this means a hefty amount of paperwork for me. I have to read and log all of the book reports kids turn in. I set up several spreadsheets to track it all. Each sheet has an individual worksheet for each kid where I record book titles, plus a general tally for the group. It took a while to set up, but it's an easy system to maintain. I'm keeping the paper reports in file folders and will return the reports at the end of the contest. The homeschool kids could probably add these to their portfolios.

Joel set up a pretty nice website for the contest that we can use to post book reviews and stuff in the Fall. To start us off, I might need to solicit some reviews from you, our online friends. Here are some of the titles we added this summer:
On Being Black and Reformed by Anthony Carter
The Lord's Service by Jeffrey Meyers
Sermons that Shaped America by William Barker
The Faith of Jesus Christ by Richard Hays
The Lord's Supper by Jean-Jacques vonAllmen
Luther's Faith: The Cause of the Gospel in the Church by Daniel Olivier
The Victory According to Mark by Mark Horne
With Reverence and Awe: Returning to the Basics of Reformed Worship by D.G. Hart
The Binding of God by Peter Lillback
The Catholicity of the Reformation by Carl Braaten & Robert Jenson
Marriage, Divorce and Remarriage in the Bible by Jay Adams

That's just a sampling. We had more than 50 books donated from our amazon wish list, largely from one very generous patron. If you have any interest in writing up a short review on any of these titles to be published online, please let me know.