Announcement for Chapter 11: 5/4/03

Announcing the latest update to Sarah's website, "Chapter 11: Lion Princess"! This "double edition" features a whopping 43 new pictures [age 27 - 32 months], from December through April. Again, apologies for the long delay; I hope you'll find it worth the wait. I've picked the best (tossing out 45 others), and formatted them within an inch of their digital lives: rotating, cropping, adjusting color, contrast, sharpness, red-eye, blah blah blah. In a few of them Sarah even deigns to smile for the camera!

Sarah is no longer a toddler or even a preschooler-in-training, she's a full-fledged Preschool BigKid. [Her day care center graduated her from the toddler room to the preschool two months early, as she was itching so badly to hang with the big kids.] She's been studying gender, and has it pretty much sussed. The other day she remarked apropos of nothing at all, "Boys have peanuts." Potty-time at her preschool is a public affair--a bunch of boys and girls crowding in at once--so they learn quickly, even if their pronounciation lags a bit.

Last month her dance class gave a low-key "recital", and ever since she's been holding command performances. That is, moves chairs in a semi-circle, hands us dolls ("My babies; I'm a mama _and_ a dancer"), and commands us to sit down and watch while she twirls around: "Shh! No talking! No clapping til the end." She especially enjoyed having her own accompanist, Grandpa Ron, tickling the ivories.

Currently Joni Mitchell tops the charts in the Bedtime Hit Parade: Sarah likes "The Circle Game," because it's about painted ponies and a kid who learns how to drive. She also enjoys singing along: "My old man, he's a walker in the drain." Other favorites include "Adon Olam", "Who Let the Dogs Out?", and of course "Found a Peanut." Her ear is improving, too: when she joins into songs, she's in the right key.

Sarah's very interested in figuring out how things work and guessing about the future. One day when I picked her up from daycare I told her that the carpets in our house were wet, because Mommy and I had rented a steam-cleaner (which hadn't happened since before she was born!). I explained how the steam-cleaner pushes warm water into the carpet then sucks it back up, but the carpet still needs time to dry more. Sarah suggested, "Maybe it will dry faster if I vacuum it with my vacuum cleaner." Never mind that Sarah's "vacuum cleaner" is a wooden stick on wheels that twirls around a spindle of brightly-colored beads and doubles as a "lawn mower;" her grasp of physics blew my mind.

Sarah loves to ask "Why?" about everything, partly for scientific curiousity and partly just to see what we'll say (we almost always say something). The wonderful thing about "Why?" is that you can follow every answer with another "Why?" and hope your moms won't notice that you're procrastinating going to bed.