Rainy days

Wow, I started this post on January 22nd. (FYI, that was more than two weeks ago. But I'll just go ahead and publish it as though it's January 22nd, because I, like my son, like playing pretend, and the thing I like pretending most these days is that I'm on top of things. So get ready for a whole lot of catch-up pretend-on-time posts.)

Jack has a new babysitter he L-O-V-E-S, named Stephanie, which incidentally is the name I used to wish I had been named, and used to curse my father for being named Stephen because it was obvious that that was the only reason I wasn't named Stephanie. I think I also used to want to spell my name Beckie, maybe not for an entirely unrelated reason. (It was the dotting the i with a heart.) Stephanie is another theta that Danny's sorority-house-mom god-sister set us up with. (Doesn't everyone need a sorority-house-mom god-sister? Clara? As-yet unborn-child of Julia and/or Scott? You have your marching orders.) But she is our favorite one yet AND she's a sophomore so that means we'll have her for longer, which makes me love her almost as much as Jack does. And Danny is cultivating an interesting relationship with her that involves driving her home in the middle of the night whenever she comes over for date night, and arguing over whether or not she should know who Green Day is. (Whether or not she should, she doesn't.)

Anyway, Stephanie has been a godsend on these recent rainy days, just the fresh face we need to keep us sane when we've been stuck inside all day, just the calming presence we need to keep Jack from choking Sadie with his exuberance for hugging her.



That doesn't always work. When Stephanie is not available, I fall back on giant train sets. Much as I remember being the case for my barbie bookcase-cum-dollhouse, the real fun is in setting everything up. Once it's set up, it's kind of over. But oh, we have some fun with the set-up. On this particular day, the animals all came out to see the train tracks and the animals got organized by type. Dinosaurs, other lizards, sea animals, bears, ungulates, things that live in Africa. On this particular day, I learned that Jack may have a future in phylogenetics. Either that or toddlers are merciless categorizers. Maybe both.



I especially love the blue-napkin-cum-swimming-pool for the sea animals. That smacks of the necessity-is-the-mother-of-invention resourcefulness I remember from my own childhood. (Barbie often went potty on a sideways roll of duct tape, for instance.)

Rainy days are not so bad.