Ah, brotherly love. Calm, reasoned, sharing of trains. And if you believe that, let me tell you about this bridge I have for sale...

Actually, they usually do pretty well, until Daniel announces "tomato!" and then swirls all the cars under his hands until they fall off the tracks and the bridge falls down. That's one rotten tomato, you might be thinking. Actually, the intended word is, "tornado." A little lesson in unintended consequences for Edward, who invented the game, but HATES when Daniel plays it.

John snapped this with his new Droid phone during the daycare chili supper last week. They have all-school events like this in the largest classroom, which is now Edward's class--preschool ages 4 until they're off to kindergarten. Daniel loves when Edward isn't quite ready when we get there to pick him up because then he gets a few minutes to explore the big kid stuff, including an extensive dress-up collection. Edward gets mad if we get there too early because then he doesn't have time to do his "DAP" (which I believe stands for "developmentally adaptive play.") This is the post-lunch, pre-nap calming mechanism in this classroom. Each kid gets a little bin of objects to sort by shape, color, or "patter-in" (pattern) of their invention. Edward's favorite is the "fruit dap."

We had a bit of serendipity where Edward's class is concerned. The teachers had the kid vote on the themes for the next two months and "space" was selected for February. Then on Friday night, we noticed that we were to have the largest full moon of the year plus a visible Mars. So we bundled up after dinner and stepped out to have a look. This was followed by a visit to the library on Saturday and a selection of books on planets and space. There aren't too many at a pre-K comprehension level, but we're adapting and he's having fun learning the names of the planets and which are too hot and too cold.

Speaking of reading, here's a sweet picture of Edward "reading" to Daniel. In reality, this book "Dig Dig Dig" has been a favorite since Ed was Daniel's age and has long been memorized. I can't remember why Daniel is wearing his pajama bottoms with his regular shirt. It might have been the day I thought I might get him to sleep longer if I took off his jeans and gave him comfy pajamas. Nothing doing. He sleeps when he wants and not a minute more, usually waking before Edward. This gives us a little one-on-one playtime and led to a very funny exchange one afternoon last week. We were playing with trains when Daniel suddenly became interested in a blemish in the wood steps leading up to the dining room. "Hey, Mom. Come check this out!" he called. I was too stunned to move. "Did he just say "come check this out?" I thought. Then he repeated himself. It is always startling to hear oneself echoed in the mouth of a two-year-old.

Although he now has a horrible hacking cough and was sent home from school with a fever today, Daniel received a good report at his two-year well-child check last week. He is 31 pounds and about 35 inches. I think I've read that doubling the height at two gives a pretty good estimate for adult height, so Daniel may tower over all of us. I actually thought he'd be heavier--this means there's a full six lb. difference between the two boys. Hard to tell from holding them!

Unfortunately both boys learned from their H1N1 vaccine experience to fear shots. Daniel's immunization record was a bit of a mess because we had deferred a shot at 18-months and hadn't seen our own doctor at that appointment so she couldn't quite decipher the other doctor's notes. That meant we had lots of time to wait in anticipation of said shots. Sometime during this waiting, Edward figured out he was also getting a shot (second round of H1N1) and then all hell broke loose. He crawled under a chair and wouldn't come out. I tried reasoning with him, "Yes, I know it hurts, but it keeps you healthy. And it doesn't hurt for a long time, it's very quick." I pulled out some terms he uses from his music class: "Edward, it's not 'larrrrgo,' it's 'presto!'" He was not impressed. I'd even brought his "teeny" (security blanket) for comfort, and said I'd take it away if he didn't come out. He calmly handed it to me from under the chair, where he stayed. So of course, Daniel started freaking out because Edward was, and I had to hold them both down one after the other to get stuck (Daniel got two in each leg!) Not a highlight of motherhood.

Let's hope we don't have another novel flu virus next year. They're both now old enough for the mist seasonal flu vaccine (Edward got it this year for seasonal, but it wasn't available when we went for H1N1.)

I was going to include some video here, but it requires a lot more editing as it's difficult to shoot more than a few seconds without Daniel running up to the camera saying, "I wanna see Daniel!" Will see if we can splice together a few clips. Maybe John can tackle that while I'm at class tonight. Last week's first session had to be canceled due to hazardous driving conditions--even though we only had a few inches of snow, high winds created whiteout on the interstate between Iowa City and Cedar Rapids (where the class is held and many students live/work.) Tonight's forecast again calls for snow (just an inch or two), but not the wind. Spring can't come soon enough!