Coolin' at the Playground Ya Know

(Editor's note: If you can identify the band who made the above album *without* GOOGLE-ING it, you win a prize).

There's a lovely playground close to our new home, and just steps from the foot of the Art Museum. We try to visit several times a week; for the most part, it's full of toddlers and pre-schoolers and moms and dads and nannies. There was one time that Brodie and Margot and Portia and I visited and were greeted by some teenage thugs smoking dope on the swings, but that seems to have been an isolated incident.

Anyway, there weren't any thugs to be seen last week when we went.

And we're off! Brodie thinks this is a much cooler way to transport the Min (I'm still a stroller gal).


Margot's favorite playground activity is the slide.


More! More!


That day, she and Brodie finished with twenty pull-ups each.

Rocket Min

I love these glasses. And I love that Margot wears them willingly. If you truly know me, you *might* know of my secret adoration of Elton John, which explains my affinity for these glasses.



One of my very favorite celebrity encounters was back in 1999 when I ate dinner at a table next to Elton John in the Buckhead area of Atlanta. But that doesn't top when Brodie and I actually dined at the same table as Owen Wilson in Rome, or when REM and Sting stayed at the same hotel as us in Rio (you haven't lived until you've lounged at the same pool as Sting).

If You Can't Be with the One You Love, Love the One You're With

Margot accepted the loss of Piggy but appears to be moving on.

Clearly this is the healthiest option and I'm glad she's taking to a new lovey-object.

Guess who it is?

Alternate Piggy.

He has a new name though. Instead of Baba (which Margot interchangeably pronounced Ba-bah and Ba-bay), he is called Ba-bee. Which makes me wonder: was Original Piggy really named Bab - A, and Alternate Piggy is now Bab-B?

The Simple Life

This morning Brodie, Margot, and I visited Reading Terminal Market in downtown Philly, which, I must admit, put Eastern Market to shame.

In addition to her love of endless verses of Old MacDonald, Margot also has a grand 'ol time playing with her Little People farm. (I wish this blog had an audio component, her version of "ba-aa-aa-aa" for a sheep is really funny.)

The Amish set up a petting zoo in front of the market this morning, and we brought Margot down so she could see the sheep and horses up close and personal.

She started out cautious:


Which quickly escalated to fearful:


And concluded with sheer terror:


She felt less threatened by the quilts and homemade preserves inside the market, I assure you.

Happy Hour

For the past week, Min has marked the five o'clock hour with a sprint to the kitchen and a demand for cookies.

I don't quite understand the sounds she uses to say "Cookies" (I think it starts with a "D" and it's two-syllables) but her emphatic pointing at the cabinet where the cookies reside make her wishes clear. I comply with two or three overpriced organic Sesame Street cookies that I picked up at Whole Foods.



(Side note - Whole Foods is only a few blocks from our home. Min and I have ducked in so many times for samples while we are out walking that she now insists "Cheese, cheese!" whenever we pass by.)

What interests me about Min's love of sweets is that it occurs at the same time each day. I can't figure out what sparked this, seeing as I never offer cookies without her requesting them. What is going on in the house that sends her to the kitchen in the same fifteen minute period each day? How does she measure time?

Is she Sumerian ? (60 seconds per minute, 60 minutes per hour?)
Or is she more like Schopenhauer, who stated that "Time is the condition [yelling, pointing at the cabinet] of the possibility of succession [cookies will be removed and distributed] ."

(Or could it be that by 5:00 *I* need distraction, and so occasionally turn on the television?)