Rain. Now in the third day. The kids find ways to play and scuttle up and down from room to room, picking things up, making up games, putting them down somewhere else and moving on. But they miss being able to run. Noah runs anway, around the loop through the hall, kitchen, and living room. Maxim makes up more complicated play and moves more things. Last night Maxim and Noah made a dancing train around the loop. Noah dances by bouncing his squat little body and moving his arms alternately and separately up and down. Maxim made sure the train would have to stop in the kitchen so she could show her new dance. "When I go like this," she says to Marcela and I while showing her best bow, "You clap, ok?" She opens the kitchen door halfway into the room and goes 'back stage' behind it. Noah continues into the living room, moving well to the music. We are listening to Vic Lali, our local children's musician. During the summer Maxim and Noah went almost every Thursday to Vic's morning music sing-a-long at the Knights of Columbus Hall downtown. Vic is giving us a piano, if we can get it here to our house. Marcela had several booklets with circles and squares of sample book materials. She and the kids pulled the pieces off and built another train collage to add to the wall in the kid's room. They have just begun their work in this photograph. They will finish today by adding glitter to all the things they painted and glued yesterday. You can also see the mural Marcela painted on the wall behind the sink in this photograph. Maxim found a deck of my playing cards yesterday and asked me what games you played with them. "Lots of grown up games, sweetie." I answered.
"Can you play kids' games, too?"
"Well..." I tried to think if I knew the rules to any kids' games. "You could play go fish."
“Go fish?" She asked. "How does that play? I never played with these before, that’s why. Do you have to take all the cards? I want to play beat the fish.”
“No, not beat the fish, go fish.”
“Can we play go fish? Is it easy? So you take all the cards? Well, what about these ones because these don’t have any fans on them. Daddy can you help me play beat the fish?” We played and she won.
They also watched movies. Once Upon a Potty is Noah's favorite one right now, even though he still won't sit. We had ravioli with an asparagus cream sauce for dinner last night and each of us had another of the spice cookies that Marcela and Maxim made yesterday morning. We talked about going to Hull this weekend, weeks ago. The rain has disuaded us. If it is not too wet, we will carefully rearrange the basement to accomodate the yard things we moved into it on Friday. They have forecast rain through next Saturday. We will have to rent some more movies.