catchy tune

Last night, we attended the younger children's school dance. Despite insisting that he did not want to go, and would not dance, Iain enjoyed running around like mad with his friends. Lucy's favorite moments would have been riding (dancing) on my shoulders and being swung around in circles (while the dance floor was relatively empty.

We all know Anna likes dancing. And so she enjoyed herself...except that the music was pretty loud, and the dance floor was pretty crowded. As a result, we left pretty early. On the way back to the car, she told me she wanted that 'catchy tune.' For a minute, I didn't quite understand. Or, rather, I thought that she was saying 'catchy tune,' but couldn't believe that could be right.

'Catchy tune?' I repeated. 'Yes,' she replied, in that tone of voice that says, 'what else would I have been saying?' like it's blindingly obvious. Ok, which tune? 'Happy?' I asked, 'the song from Despicable Me?' Nope. She shook her head. 'Catchy tune,' she said again, 'boys in a train.' Boys in a train? Then it dawned on me. 'The Macarena?' I asked. Big smile. 'Yeessssss!'

Heaven help us.

She's almost a teenager...

Anna is twelve. So she's into makeup, likes Monster High, and goes to secondary school (which would be middle school in the US--6th grade). After school, she usually goes up to her room for a while. When she re-emerges, she's wearing a totally different set of clothes. But she still plays with Barbies and lines up all her dolls and cuddly toys to play 'school.' And she still enjoys the 'How do dinosaurs...' book series, as well as If You Give a Mouse a Cookie and all of its sequels.

One of the fantastic things about Anna being twelve and having a little sister who's two is the way they (sometimes) play together. This evening, I was reciting (not singing--I didn't grow up with it, and don't know the tune) 'Round and round the garden, like a teddy bear.' Suddenly Lucy turned to Anna and held out her hand, for Anna to repeat the nursery rhyme and the motions (that end with a tickle, if you aren't familiar with it). And so she did--over and over. She enjoyed Lucy's giggles as much as I do. Saying the nursery rhyme wasn't a chore, it was a delight for her as well as for her little sister.

Ah, maternal bliss. Don't worry. I'm sure it won't last long...

'fashion paints'?

There are plenty of stories from our visit to the US this summer. Iain improved his swimming dramatically, Lucy discovered the joy of water wings, Thomas learned to handle a kayak, and Anna found that she likes crab. Consider this post the first installment of the 'holiday' series. Hopefully it will be cheering for all (not least of all, me) as the seasons change and our tans fade.

We vacationed on Tybee Island during the summers when we lived in Atlanta, so we were delighted to go back to somewhere fun and 'foreign', and yet familiar...and hot! Dressing for the day involved choosing which bathing suit to wear for the beach or pool. Wonderful.

One day, as Anna and I were walking back from the beach together, she insisted on 'fashion paints'. It wasn't the first time, either. The day before, when we were sitting at the table, she had said she wanted 'some of those paints'. Which paints? I asked. 'Those fashion paints', she replied. Fashion paints? I wondered. Some new nail polish maybe? No. That wasn't it. Clearly, it was something we had seen together before, but I couldn't figure out what. Eventually I said that she would have to point it out the next time we saw it. Patient girl!

Somewhere in the back of my mind, though, I must have been working on the puzzle. When she asked me on the way back from the beach, we rehearsed some of the same things. Then I remembered something we had seen and talked about: airbrush tattoos. Ah-ha! Which one do you want? CAT. She even knew that she wanted it on her leg:

Mystery solved!