new year's eve: a cautionary tale

"I went to sleep and Santa came and then I woke up and Santa was there and I said, 'Hey! What are you doing to me?' and he said, 'I'm sorry' and I said, 'I don't like you sorry in my house!' and Santa goed away and I went to sleep and then a noise came and I said, 'Hey! What are you doing to me?' to the noise and the duck said, 'Quack, quack' and the dolphin said, 'Owwwwoooooohhhhh, oooowoooh', like a wolf.

A wolf came, a big bad wolf came, and I said 'Why are you being bad to me?' and he said 'What are you doing to me?' and I said 'Squaaaash!'."

                                    -Lucy, telling us a story in the bath tonight

Goodbye, 2011!

friday cute shot

on middle childhood

"As I crawl over those rocks, I keep repeating, in a kind of zestful, copious and deeply gratifying incantation, the English word ‘childhood,’ which sounds mysterious and new, and becomes stranger and stranger as it gets mixed up in my small, overstocked, hectic mind, with Robin Hood and Little Red Riding Hood, and the brown hoods of old hunchbacked fairies.”  

Vladimir Nabokov, “Speak, Memory”

From a New York Times article on the new science around middle childhood.

"skippyjohn hurt is a good singer"

 

Mississippi John Hurt

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Skippyjon Jones

=  "SkippyJohn Hurt", the most requested record in our house