The Gemini Diaries

Perritt's favorite book right now is A Bedtime for Bear. There's are two parts of the book that he loves, 1) when the mouse is getting on his clothes and he sings and 2) when he gets woken up by the bear and has this startled look on his face. Now, I love to do the sound effects here and exaggerate the scene a lot, but Perritt literally can't stop laughing during these parts of the book. He was crying the other night he was laughing so hard. 

MaryPoole, meanwhile, is over it. 

She actually prefers to go to bed early rather than hear me read a A Bedtime for Bear again. In fact, when we order our books for reading before bedtime, she makes me read A Bedtime for Bear last and when we actually get to the book at the end of our reading, she climbs up to bed and says "I'm going to bed. You can read that in Perritt's room." It's not that she doesn't like the book, she's just over the humor. We've done it so many times, it's a dead horse to her. 

It just goes to show you that some people can watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail a thousand times and it's still just as funny as the first time. Others can't take a single viewing. I think we know who is who in this family.

MaryPoole's favorite book rotates (Bible is probably her all-time favorite), but over Christmas, she was partial to A Charlie Brown Christmas. After Christmas, we picked up a second copy of the book because this second copy has some little audio snippets from the cartoon that you can play when you push a button. This new book as recently taken our house by storm. It's the cutest thing in the world to see them huddled around the book, press a button and then jump right into singing Hark the Herald Angels Sing with the Peanuts gang.

I hope they always love books this much.

Quick story about the joys of parenting at Christmastime. After MaryPoole got done talking to Santa about her wishlist, we asked her "Did you tell Santa you didn't want a real hippo?" and she got this almost deathly pall over her face and looked up at us with a look of utter shock.

"No." she said calmly "I forgot. I hope he doesn't bring me a real hippo."

At which point LeeAnn proceeded to pile on. "Oh no, MaryPoole. You forgot to tell him? Uh oh, Daddy you're probably need to get some wood to start building a fence just in case."

And then me "Yep. I'll get started on this afternoon. We can build him a big pen in the backyard. But what do hippos even eat?"

And then Perritt (unwittingly) jumps in "I think maybe hay.... or some salad. Hippos love salad."

And all the the while MaryPoole has this look on her face like a high school student who turned in her test early only to find out later that the back of the test had questions on it too and she'd just left them all blank because she didn't know they were there. We almost felt bad about teasing her about it, but then she said "I'm sure Santa knows not to bring me a real hippo. How could he get a big hippo in his sleigh anyway?"

She's so logical. "You're probably right, MaryPoole. I'm sure he'll know what you meant."

But Perritt wouldn't let it go and started giggling about the idea of a real hippo. "He could probably fit a baby hippo on his sleigh. A REAL baby hippo because they aren't so big and fat yet."

It was just enough to keep her guessing. Much to her delight, she found her stuffed hippo on Christmas morning.

Santa always knows.

Perritt: Race car and a race track

MaryPoole: Tennis racket and a hippopotamus