Peanuts

• Summer is over. Last week was cold and rainy. Friday morning Rachel took the kids to Matthew's gym class with the rain coming down in sheets and the temperature about 45. Before getting in the car, Matthew ran out into the rain and stood there looking up at it. "What a nice day! I like the rain!"
• Saturday was the first day of Matthew's indoor soccer. I felt bad for him -- he looked forward to it so much, and started warming up (running across the gym, and jumping jacks) with such enthusiasm, but standing in line to do drills drained that completely. Three times he came over to me and asked to go home. I encouraged him to stay to the end and get his soccer shirt, which he was pleased with. Next week they should jump right into games, so we'll see how that turns out.
• Sick babies are no fun. Last night Melissa barfed three times, once right after we set off for Rachel's cousin dinner, once at the dinner, and another time before bed for good measure. (She wasn't acting sick, or we wouldn't have taken her to dinner. Remember, this kid pukes when she gets angry enough, sick or not. So we're perhaps a little more blase about this sort of thing than we were with Matthew.) Today she emptied her stomach all day; Rachel lost count. Poor kid. Poor mama. She was so sick that when Rachel put her in the shower after one of her purges and sprayed some shaving cream on the wall, she just stood there. Normally there are few things she enjoys more than smearing shaving cream around the bathtub.
  
• Melissa enjoys reading. She'll point to the pictures and tell you all about them. "Bjabwablabjabja." When Rachel asks her questions like "Where's the dog?" or, "Where's the ball?" Melissa will point to them.
• Melissa can actually hold still during Nursery snack time, more or less. When Matthew was this age no force on earth could keep him in a chair. Melissa sits there swinging her legs and eats her crackers. (Water is still beyond her unaided abilities. Or maybe it's so much fun to smear on the table that she spills it on purpose. Either way she is not to be trusted with a glass, unattended.)
  
• Matthew enjoys reading too. Rachel is teaching him phonics now, and he's learning the sounds letters make. He's pretty sharp: yesterday he was asking me how to spell his friends' names on his computer (not at all phonetic, except for Emma), and when he got tired of that he busied himself for a bit over his keyboard and announced: "Bwock! [block]" And there on the screen was: bock. Pretty close!
• They usually play together pretty well these days, but sometimes Matthew gets a little tired of his sister. "I don' wan' this Lissa anymore. Le's [let's] get diffren' sister," he announced one morning after she'd swiped something of his again.