Keeping Emma

I spent most of today sitting with Emma and Ada, which was a treat but now I'm exhausted.

Did you ever sing until you lost your voice? Emma now knows every old song Ireland and Scotland ever produced and if you want to hear a rousing chorus of "The risin" of the Moon", she's your girl. Remind me to never take her to Belfast.

I imagine Grandfather MacDaniel would roll over in his grave, as I am pretty sure he was an Orangeman through and through, but me and Em are not. IRA forever.

Nothing like teaching revolutionary politics to toddlers. Tomorrow we may have to fight off the wicked English again. Actually I like the English very much, not counting Mr. Payne, my neighbor who is one. A royal Payne. He and Jacob the Irishman once spent a very interesting afternoon. Me and the Irish won.

I ususally do win because I insist upon it and after awhile I wear the other guy out.

So, anyway, Ada was content to bounce in her jumperoo as long as it was outdoors, which would have been delightful were it not for the fact that when Aiden got home from school he and Emma decided they wanted to be anywhere but the front yard.

I am the only old woman I know who can still sling a baby under my arm and chase down two little people headed for the river. Of, course, right after that Jean had to watch everyone on account of I was having a stroke, but still, it's good to know there's life in the old girl, yet. Me, I mean, Jean's a young girl.

We had chocolate pudding for lunch. Jean thought we should have macaroni and cheese, but I can get the pudding out faster than she can cook something healthy. Pudding's healthy, it has eggs and milk. It's just more fun to eat than eggs and milk alone. So we had pudding.

Then we wrote cat four hundred times because that's Emma's best word and she'll only consent to sound out other three letter words like mat and sat and bat if we stick cat in there after every third word. It was the first word she figured out and she's right fond of it, let me tell you.

Then I took the dry erase board and drew barns (Emma insists they are the cow's house and that's all they are) until Ada drooled so much she washed the board and we had to quit.

So now I'm exhausted and that's why this is a short blog entry but after my nap, who knows what might come to me?

In the meantime, I strongly encourage you to go wading, it's a wading kind of day.