Another writer or editor?

Lincoln just uttered his first three-syllable words today, bumblebee and newspaper. Here's our favorite:

We're back

The first of our two holiday adventures, this one with the Garrott side of our family, was well worth the long drive from Chicago to Western Kentucky.

We spent an evening at Mammy and Pap's house and the rest of our time at Grandy's cottage in Kentucky Dam Village. Many thanks for the hospitality, as usual, and the photos, some of which we borrowed and added to our own below.

Let's have a look!

Here's Mammy showing Levynn and Clark a few things on the piano.


Here's Grandaddy on the floor with Levynn and Clark.


Here's Dad and Mom sharing a moment.


Here's one of Levynn's three late-night crashes in Grandy's lap.


Here's Uncle Byron reading our battered and beloved Frosty the Snowman book to cousin Clark, Lincoln and Levynn.


Here's our fun Thanksgiving Day gang, gathered for a neat shot on the cottage stairs.

And here are those cute kids again, holding hands during the peaceful ride home.

Oh, and did we mention that it's amazing how much different a parent's view of such a trip can be when the kids have been happy on the road?

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Our cute kids

A field trip... to see Ella Jenkins

Levynn's class went on its third(!) field trip today, and this was a special one. Has anyone heard of Ella Jenkins? She's an 84-year-old children's folk singer who received a GRAMMY Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004 for her wonderful career, and she's still performing.

The Pre-K and kindergarten classes (with Dad along as a chaperone) walked to the Old Town School of Folk Music and filled almost the entire auditorium for Miss Jenkins' hour-long show. She gets the audience involved in every song, which is a nice way to keep young kids interested. She also calls audience members - both children and adults - to the stage to give her a hand.

Levynn didn't go up, but Dad sure did. He volunteered once when Miss Jenkins called for seven men, since there weren't many of those in the seats. But near the end of the show she called on him specifically. She said that she didn't know how to make a clucking noise with her tongue and wanted to hear the audience try it. Apparently, Dad's cluck rose above the din of all clucks because people turned to look at him and Miss Jenkins pointed right at him. So he shared the microphone with her and clucked to the beats in the answers to the questions in the "Did You Feed My Cow?" song.

Can you picture that?

Levynn, the real performer in the family, generously called Dad a "star" and gave him a big hug when he returned to his seat.

She can draw!

Phew!

We hadn't said so, but we had been wondering privately for a while. We've insisted on letting her draw and color and paint however she likes, without any direction from us, and all she ever produced were scribbles and splotches.

But a few days ago she sketched three faces on her magnetic Doodle Pro, out of the blue. Then, emboldened, she asked for a large piece of paper and quickly drew these potato head likenesses of her and some classmates.

Eureka!

Brothers and sisters

Levynn and Lincoln love each other dearly. They hug and kiss many times a day, they laugh at each other's silliness, and they even share quiet times together now and then.


Then there are moments like the ones Mom and Dad witnessed this week and previously had only seen in books or maybe experienced as kids long ago.

"Don't follow me around, Lincoln!"

"Stop following me, Lincoln!"

"Why does he keep following me?!"

Because he thinks she's neat, right?

A tasty meal

Don't take this the wrong way. Well-prepared dinners are not unusual in this household. But this one - stuffed acorn squash - seemed to merit a mention for two reasons:

It was pretty.


And the kids eagerly dug into it.



Kudos to Mom for cooking it.

Bath time, buddy

A tasty election

Voting was the talk even in Pre-K class on Tuesday, when all of Chicagoland was abuzz with Obama-mania.

See the sticker on Levynn's shirt?


The kids in Levynn's class voted for different colored fruits, and Levynn chose "red apple."


But she'd tell you that she would have voted for Barack Obama if she had the chance.

Another show

Mom and Levyyn traveled to the Museum of Science and Industry, the new home of the Chicago Children's Theatre, to see the critically-acclaimed If All the World were Paper on Sunday. It was fantastic.

They caught the bus outside Tribune Tower, where this shot was taken.

A mark of her maturity?

It has been said that maturity is the ability to postpone pleasure. But what does it mean when a 4-year-old shows that?

Levynn wanted to eat a yogurt after her main course tonight and requested peach, which has become such a favorite that she openly asks us to not give that flavor to Lincoln. But when I told her (before actually looking in the fridge) that I thought we had only one peach yogurt left, she said, "Then I'll save it for another time."