And Then I Stepped in Gum . . .

Mishmash of Stuff

I have numerous short things to say, so I'm just going to throw them all in here.

RESERVOIR DAISIES

So I started a Daisy Girl Scout troop a few weeks ago. I've got eight kindergartners so far, and the roster looks like this: Katie, Gabriella, Elise, Alice, Madison, Madison, Sarah, and Sarah. At least it makes it easy to remember all the names, something I'm really bad at. I was regaling my mom with the tale of multiple names, and she said, "Maybe you should assign them all a color."

My mind immediately flashed to a scene from Reservoir Dogs, only acted out by 6-year-old girls. I wish I'd actually seen the movie sometime, so I could flesh this improbably vision out even more thoroughly.

BTW, as Dave remarked, remember when the name "Madison" was so freaky that it was actually a joke in Splash?

MO-MO MOJO

Ian has suddenly become obsessed with everyone's favorite little furry red monster, Elmo. Or, in Ian-speak, "Mo-mo." (I don't know why this is, since I know he can say the name of the letter "L" on its own.) Now he has to have his "Mo-mo whoo-whoo book" (a book about Elmo and the fire station) when we go somewhere in the car. Guess it's time to dig out the stuffed Elmo floating around here somewhere. Also, this means that the plan to buy tickets to the Sesame Street Live show coming to Mobile in mid-March is probably a good one.

What is it about that little guy? Why do kids become so obsessed with him? I wish I had some pithy and funny explanation, but I really don't.

KINDERMUSIK BRAINWASHING

Ian and I also started our first Kindermusik class last week. I never got around to doing this with Katie, as we had a few other options that we took advantage of (a regular playgroup and a "Hooray for Play" class). My first reaction to the whole thing is, "8:30 on a Friday morning is way too early to be that peppy." I signed up for the 8:30 class because my friend Tabitha was doing it at that time with her girls (and her nanny), but geez, that was a mistake. Not that we're not up and about by then anyway, but rushing to get somewhere that early is just a huge headache.

The teacher is one of those high-voiced, middle-aged, preschool-teachery types. She seems very nice, if you can tame the nagging urge to look for a lobotomy scar while you're talking to her. She likes to talk about the "mommies" in the class -- which trips her up because class participants also include a daddy, a grandma, and a nanny ("friend Sarah"). And we are chided not to talk to each other in class, which I find really obnoxious. Still, Ian actually participated a bit today, and answered questions when prompted -- the only one to do so. No self-esteem problems with that boy so far. The CD and book that came with the class totally hypnotize him, and I can set him up with that for 20-30 minutes while I'm doing my own thing. Is using music as a babysitter fundamentally better or worse than using the TV for that purpose? Why? Discuss amongst yourselves.

The aforementioned Dad takes time off work to come to the class with his wife and their twins, whom they adopted while they were in utero. In fact, they were with the birth mom when they found out the girls were twins via ultrasound. How strange is that? I'm really dying to know how they worked out the 2-for-1 deal, but I'm being good and keeping my nosiness in check.

Every time I see identical twins, I have flashbacks to seeing Michael J. Fox on Letterman talking about his twin children. He summed them up thusly: "Twins are just weird." And they sort of are, if you think about them too much. But awfully cute. I accused the parents today of cheating because they took pictures of them prior to class when the girls had their name tags on. I imagine it's probably hard to sort out pictures when they come back from the developer.

That's it for today -- just a few things on my mind. Unfortunately, I'm not feeling particularly coherent or witty today. Which is a shame, because for the first time in ages I slept from 11:20 to 6:15 last night. Has Ian finally gotten this sleeping thing down? (He was doing well with the clock for a little while, but then took to getting up at 5:30, as well as waking up once around 4 a.m. each night.) One can only hope.

This weekend, if it warms up and dries out a little bit, we're headed to some Mardi Gras parades. When in Rome, you know . . .

posted by Jennifer Morgan, at 2:48 PM