Last night as I was putting Ella to bed she asked me a simple question.

"Daddy, can you leave my door open? I want Mesquaki [our cat who likes the kids] to sleep with me."

I said no. We want her door closed or she will come wandering out or get woken up. I gently explained that sometimes we leave Claire's door open for the cats because she is older.

She tried again.

"Daddy, can you leave my door open? I am scared and want Mesquaki to help me."

Still no, but that rarely stops a persistent child.

"Daddy, I need my door open. I went to the doctor."

This evening over dinner Claire began an interesting line of questioning me about something she learned in school today.

She first wanted to know if I ever knew about King Maarther. I'm thinking of the fellow with the round table, but she informed me that was wrong.

Intrigued, the conversation continued.

He thought something was wrong.

He thought that everybody should be able to go to the park.

He was a great man.

He talked to the people again before he got shot.

At a family gathering we celebrated Ella's birthday this evening. Because parties must have themes, the theme for this 3rd birthday party was ponies. And among the themed items that showed up was a pink pony pinata and a nicely decorated tiny baseball bat for whacking the pinata.

Ella took right to the bat. She wanted to play ball in the house. Barring that, she just carried it around.

In a recent round of lessons-on-bugs, the girls and I were outside talking about spiders. We had several examples of neat spider to look at with a good contingent of daddy long legs spiders. Ella thought this was a funny name.

We've probably not explored spiders in the back yard since August or early September.

It's always fun how kids combine things that were not really expected to be blended.

Melanie really enjoys yoga, and it's something she shares with the girls. Claire loves going to the kids yoga classes when Melanie goes for a session. Ella follows along, and can do a few of the poses really well.

Her favorite is either the tree pose or downward dog. It's unclear, but she does them both randomly.

In the last five months or so Claire's progress in learning the violin has been wonderful, almost stunning. She passed from the "Pre-twinkle" phase into "Suzuki book I" and is picking up on songs at a good clip. She has a great ear and can pick up simple tunes in the key of A pretty easily. She only knows the fingerings for tunes in the key of A. She also likes to sit at the piano, on which she has no formal training, and plink out the tunes she knows on the violin. It's fun.

In mid October we decided to finally move Ella from a day bed to a full size bed. The crib we originally bought for Claire converted from crib to day bed to full size. So she has this huge bed now, sorta takes up the whole room.

Within minutes of getting it set up, Ella and Claire set off testing the bed's most critical characteristics. Like how high you can bounce on it.

Last month the whole family went camping in Winfield, KS at the annual Walnut Valley Festival. I've attended several times, but this was the first time for Melanie and the girls.

Ella and Claire loved it. A month later and Ella still asks when we are going camping again.

One funny little memory. On the last day I had taken all the support bars out of the tent and it lay collapsed on the ground as we put it away. Ella looked at it, very concerned, and said "Daddy, you popped the tent!"

Indeed.

Not sure why but for the past weeek Claire has been saying "Don't get mad at Daddy. I love my daddy and you can't get mad at him".. Now she likes to say it often and has a smile on her face. Well just now at dinner Claire said it again and then Ella says "Yeah mom don't get mad at daddy - don't get mad at him....don't step on him and hurt him.....because if you do you will have to sit in the chair (black chair I put her in when she does something really bad). Then she says we don't hit, we don't hit anyone, we don't hit Claire, we don't hit Ella, we don't hit anyone." Very funny.

Yesterday Claire, Ella, Melanie and I were going into a building. It had a circle drive in front of it for drop off/pickup. The curbs were all labeled "no parking, fire zone".

Claire looked at these bright red curbs and asked Melanie a very simple question.

"Mommy, is that only parking for red cars?"

Claire started preschool last month at Highlawn Montessori, a school not too far from home (much closer than the 45 minute ride we were seriously considering for the closest Waldorf School).

The Montessori classroom is full of materials for project work. Ella calls it a museum. Every few days she talks about going to Claire's Museum with excitement - taking Claire to and from School is exciting for Ella.

This morning Ella was woken up by me in order to get Claire to pre-school. She was very tired and her eyes were too. I put her on the changing table and she says "My eyes are not working mom - they are broken!". I told her that happens sometimes when you first wake up. I said give it some time and you will be able to see. About 30 seconds later she screams "I CAN SEEE NOW!!!! I CAN SEE THEY ARE WORKING NOW!!". Oh that was sooooo funny. Nice start to the day.

Months ago I decided to compete in the Kansas State Fiddling Championship held in Lawrence, KS. I've been preparing for a while with a goal that was quite frankly to get up, play as best as I could, and get down. I consider it a performance more than a competition.

Claire has been watching this process, and declared on Thursday that she wanted to compete on Sunday. So why not.

We worked on and off for three days on the logistics of her playing three tunes without us talking to each other (talking is a disqualification in this blind judging event) and how to work with a rhythm accompaniment.

Claire likes the Beatles tune "Let it Be" and regularly asks us to play it on the piano or to play back a recording of it.

This morning both Ella and Claire woke up before I left for work. Ella wanted to eat (applesauce), Claire wanted to dance. I queued up a playlist of every version of Let it Be we have in our mp3 collection, put it on repeat so it would last well past my leaving for work, and went upstairs to prepare to leave.

When I came back down, Claire had put on the ladybug ballet costume that she loves to run around in. Nothing unusual there. She was dancing away. As I donned my phone, wallet and keys Claire danced up to me and explained her choice of outfit.

For the 4th of July we spent the evening with the Mulkey family and watched a pretty impressive fireworks display in their neighborhood.

Claire spent much of it with her hands over her ears.

Ella was terrified of booms that she didn't know were about to happen, and fascinated by any explosion that she was watching.

Every time a firework was done, she would say to us "I want more cracker fire. Where'd the cracker fire go?"