People argue over the real point of school - teach kids stuff, or just keep them off the street? - but I know what it is. School is a stock exchange for germs. Anywhere kids get together more than a couple of days in a row, their multiple diseases put on a big derivative trading floor, in which an invisible hand efficiently allocates germ resources to the households where each can do the most damage. Last week Laura went back to Playmates for her final summer preschool session before Kindergarten. Two days later, Mary had the customary sore-throat-and-headache symptoms. Lillian got it a couple of days later. Now I have it. Welcome to our home, germs.Lillian and Laura each passed a small transportation milestone last month. Laura started riding her bike without training wheels (part of the time), and Lillian started riding in the blue hiking backpack, which we didn’t put Laura in until she was over a year old. Lillian’s neck seemed to have strengthened suddenly, so she could hold her head up for long stretches. So we tried it. The only problem is the actual strapping in. Once she is in there, she seems happy. She just hates to sit still and be personhandled like that.Lillian seems to more bothered by confinement than Laura was at that age. My friend John classifies kids, like belly buttons, as “innies” and “outies.” Some of them like to be carried facing in, and some would rather be in the driver’s seat, looking out. Lillian is clearly the latter. She never has liked the Snugli-style front carrier that we used every day with Laura. We didn�t even bother trying a sling. She want straight from the arms to the big-kid backpack.
Lillian’s speech now includes consonant-vowel combinations that seem to carry meanings. She often says something that sounds like “Die, die, dogleg,” probably an ancient curse held over from a previous life in which she played golf. I try to say “Hi, Dad” over and over in her presence as often as I remember to, just in case her language acquisition strategy resembles that of a parrot.
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