Eleanor said, “I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but I think I lost it. Maybe JT took it.” When I asked her if JT took her sandwich, she said yes. I told her that it’s her food, and she should tell JT he can’t eat it, and she should tell the teacher, but she had a look on her face that made me think she didn’t know what to do about it. I’m going to have to talk to a teacher tomorrow.

Eleanor gave Agnes a flower she picked at school and said, “It’s okay when it’s squished. It’s still pretty.”

The July 2009 photos are up. This month we went to the OC Fair and the circus.

This month we also taught the kids to play more card games. Sometimes we’ll play Go Fish, and sometimes we’ll play Sevens. The kids don’t understand how to block in Sevens, but Agnes plays a competitive game anyway.

Miranda has been interested in jigsaw puzzles as well. She can do our twenty-four piece puzzles by herself. The next bigger puzzle we have is one hundred pieces. Miranda tries them, but we generally need to help. I’ve been teaching them to try to put together the border first.

Miranda says that her favorite animal is a cat. She’ll sometimes meow to us. Eleanor likes cats too, but she says that her favorite animal is a cow because milk comes from cows. Recently, Eleanor said that she wants her skin to be brown. When we asked why, she said that brown is her favorite color (which comes from her enjoyment of chocolate milk).

Eleanor and Miranda both recently discovered that they like orange juice. We’ve been going through it much more quickly now, and we’ve been buying orange juice juice boxes for the kids’ lunch at school.

Now that I’ve been picking up the kids from school more often, I’ve been seeing what they do at school in the afternoons. Mostly it seems to consist of playing in the dirt, making dirt cakes.

When I told the kids we’re going to Mitsuwa, they asked if they had french fries. Then they asked if they had mac n cheese. Then they asked if they had chicken nuggets. I said they had ramen–noodles. They said: fat noodles? We used to go for ramen all the time, but I guess it’s been a while.

Eleanor: Mommy has a giant head, a great big head. I have a small head, but it’s kind of big.

When making a wish while blowing seeds from a dandelion, Miranda said she wished for a Cinderella, a prince and a princess. Eleanor said she wished for a cat and a dog.

Yesterday, when I picked up Eleanor from school, she showed me a piece of bark that she wanted to bring home. She called it her “bobby”. I have no idea about the derivation of the name. I noticed that both of her pockets were stuffed with bark, and told her she could bring home only one piece. She reluctantly unloaded her pockets onto a table, taking out twelve good-sized pieces of bark.

This morning, as I was driving the kids to school, Eleanor remembered the bark she had left.

ELEANOR: I want to get my bobbies.
ME: They might still be there where you left them on the table, but they might not be.
ELEANOR: Someone might have taken them. Maybe Benson. Benson’s my friend.
MIRANDA: When two people are always friends and then one person doesn’t want to be your friend, I can help. Benson can be my friend, and I can be your friend (she goes on about this for some time).
ELEANOR: Who are you talking to?

Poor Miranda.

Eleanor draws people on the sidewalk with chalk in mass production mode: she finishes 10 heads, then 10 faces, 10 bodies, etc. She works her way back and forth adding one feature at a time.

Eleanor and I are both creatures of habit. After giving her toast every morning sitting at the same traffic light on the way to school for months, today she asked me to wait to give her the toast when I tried to give it to her early.

Kids are asking a lot of questions about bodily functions. I’m considering taking out the Netter.