And the froggy went "gung-gung". . . .

9:30 at night and "gung-gung went the little green frog one day, gung-gung went the little green frogggggyyyyy," is running though my head like a toy train around a track.  

Of all the songs from the "Wee Sing" album. . . .it's always the most annoying one. 

Sleep froggy, sleep!

Metro

Ever notice on the metro how the passengers avoid eye contact with each other?  In each car, dozens of pairs of eyes concertedly stare at the wall, the floor, the banal advertisement.  If you should catch someone's gaze by accident, you quickly glance away, as if to say, "I'm not staring at you, I'm not some weirdo." 

But then you let your gaze drift back to the people sitting across from you.  What are they wearing? Where are they going? What are they reading? It's innocent voyeurism on a daily basis.

I'm looking--I'm not looking--I'm staring at the door.  

Pigtails

I came home from work this evening and the babysitter had put Bee's hair in pigtails.  It felt like my little baby grew up a whole year in the course of a workday.  

It was just the other day she was a newborn baby with a shock of punky black hair, and, I say this in a whisper, hair on her ears. It wasn't much, just a little fuzz, but it was one of the first things I noticed about her.  No one tells you that your newborn baby might have hairy ears. (It disappeared, magically, after a couple of weeks.)  

After a few months, the coarse baby hair fell out and was replaced by a downy dandelion puff of little girl hair. It has been slow to grow, creeping down over her eyes around age one and then finally growing long enough to put up in barrettes. 

So today it's pigtails--tomorrow it will be an updo for the junior prom.  

The Magic Hour

Every evening just after 8:00: the dishes are done, the baby is sleeping in her bed, the dog is snoozing on the rug. Darkness creeps in through the windows. The overhead lights are unnaturally bright. The apartment is quiet.  

There is no singing, no reading "Where is My Cat?" for the tenth time that day, no cajoling a toddler to, "Please stop pulling the dog's tail," just quiet grown-up time.  I live for that hour every day.  It is my guilt-free indulgence.

However, despite my best daily intentions to study Spanish, write letters home, or read a novel that is of at least minor literary importance, my husband and I too often spend the evening reading the Internet on our respective laptops.  I will price airfare and package vacations until my eyes blur and drool over cooking blogs. David reads the economist or the Onion.  No TV, no video games, no Scrabble--the computer is our quotidian religion.  It's terrible--terribly addictive.

All too quickly, the magic hour has vanished and it is time to take the dog out one last time, pull together stuff for the morning, and get ready for bed.