In which Kate channels Mo Willems

We are a family of Mo Willems fans. (Well, Andy hasn't really expressed any opinion yet, one way or the other, but I expect he will be a Mo fan as well.) Kate drew this montage of the pigeon and his friends.

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She lost interest coloring in the pigeon's body about halfway through, and asked me to finish that up for her. Everything else is pure Kate.



I think the duckling is my favorite.

I love this fan-created movie poster that Mo posted on his blog. Ha.

All for Kids

On Saturday we made a pilgrimage up to All for Kids bookstore in Seattle, which is about to close. I wouldn't even have known about it if I hadn't seen this post on Mo Willems' blog. When I read the article I knew we just had to go see it before it was gone.



Kate had a fun time playing in the kids' area and checking out the puppets (and even wanted to read a few books, later).



This is what I was there for--the event room, with its autographed and illustrated walls.




It was amazing. After we'd showed Kate the pigeon on the door, she wasn't really interested in staying in the room, so we had to take turns staying with her. So I'd go in and read the walls for a bit, and take some pictures, and then go out and find Doug and say something like, "Did you see the David Shannon in the corner?" and he'd go look again while I stayed with Kate for while.

















A lot of people are wondering what's going to happen to these walls when the store closes. Perhaps some wealthy benefactor will swoop in and save them, and have them removed and displayed somewhere. We can hope!

After the bookstore we stopped by the Seattle Folklife Festival for a while. It was insanely crowded, and it was also quite a bit hotter and sunnier than we'd been expecting, but we had a good time. Kate enjoyed a participatory drumming session.

Elephant and Piggie

...or, more on the genius that is Mo Willems.

We have all become Mo Willems fans (creator of Knuffle Bunny and Kate's much-beloved pigeon). I had heard of his Elephant and Piggie books, but our library doesn't have any of them, so a few weeks ago I looked them up and requested a couple from another branch. There are currently four books in the series, with more on the way. The two we have checked out are Today I Will Fly! and My Friend is Sad. Since bringing them home we have read them over and over. These are written comic-book style, with no other text besides the dialog, and are great for early readers. A lot comes through in the characters' gestures and expressions.



Kate likes both of them but she especially loves My Friend is Sad (it has a robot in it) and has the whole thing memorized now. In fact last night I watched Doug and Kate act out the book, impromptu, on the bed. Kate was really getting into it, crying "THERE WAS MORE!" with great emotion, and saying "and my best friend was not there to see it with me" in her cute little voice. (And right after that she decided that the three of us were Diego, Alicia, and Baby Jaguar, so we played at rescuing her stuffed animals for a while.)



Recently I was looking at Mo Willems' blog and found this picture of a plush Elephant and Piggie. Kate came up behind me and saw the picture. I could see the wheels turning in her head for a minute, and then she said, "Play with them?" Unfortunately they aren't available quite yet.

Books are fun. We like them.

Three!

Yes, it's true, we have a three year old. We are still rather stunned by this fact, but I'm sure it'll sink in eventually.

Kate has been learning about birthday parties, and blowing out candles and things, from Blues Clues and other sources. She's also been fascinated by candles ever since we put one in her jack o' lantern. So we knew we would have to have candles. Not being much into cake, though, we just cut a slab of panettone and stuck the candles in that. (Which was fine--Kate likes panettone.)



Kate watches Daddy light the candles. ("Candles! And little fire!" she said.) She couldn't quite figure out the blowing-out part, so Daddy helped with that.




Kate and the swag. She's finally getting the hang of unwrapping, but still needs a little help. (We've been trying to discourage paper tearing, in general.)




Aww, big smile! "It's Thomas!"



I found these cute boots for Kate (yeah, I forgot to take the price tag off. Oops). We've had a little snow this year (including some on Christmas day, which was lovely), but nothing that stuck. But hey, it could happen. Kate wore her boots when we went out later, and we were singing the Laurie Berkner song, with some adaptation: "In my pink boots! In my pink boots! I stomp around in my pink boots!"



More dinosaur stuff from Scott. Where on earth we're going to put it all, we have no idea.

We went out to the Indian buffet in Lakewood for lunch. Kate ate quite a bit, but finished before we did, of course, and then we had to try to keep her contained while we ate. That was a bit tricky.



After lunch we went over to the nearby Barnes and Noble and hung out there for quite a while. Kate thinks of bookstores as places that have toys. Oh yeah, and books, too. We found some cool pop-ups.



We also got Kate the Scholastic Knuffle Bunny video. Here she is watching it with her daddy (and her pigeon, and her Thomas), and following along in the book. Kate loves the Knuffle Bunny video. I think we've watched it like fifteen times already. (It's short.)

The video has some very cute framing stuff with Mo Willems and his daughter Trixie. (You can see quite a bit of it on amazon.) Oh, and apparently Knuffle Bunny is a girl. Who knew?

In the book, Mo Willems thanks the 358 6th Avenue Laundromat, the site of Knuffle Bunny's misadventure. I wonder if the laundromat has anything celebrating their literary fame. Is there a signed Mo Willems doodle on the wall? Do Knuffle Bunny fans make pilgrimages to the laundromat, and vie for the opportunity to put quarters into the "M" machine?

Kate just came in and saw what I was doing, and wanted to watch Knuffle Bunny again. These scholastic videos are pretty cool. We should get some more.



Our little girl is getting so big! (I know I've said that before, but she keeps getting bigger!) She's talking so much these days, and we are all enjoying the wonders of communication. We can tell each other things! Yes! She still has some pronoun confusion--when she's having trouble with something, she hollers, "Can I help you?" and when she wants to hand us something she holds it out and says, "Give it to me?" She's also become very interested in the smoke alarm, which she calls the "smokel arm." It's too cute. I know we'll miss these baby things as she gets older.

Happy birthday, Kate! I think three will be fun.

Christmas pigeon (and dinosaurs!)

I was hoping to get the Christmas pictures posted before Kate's birthday, but things have been a little crazy around here.

Christmas morning Kate slept late. Doug went in and asked her, "Do you want to get up and open presents?" and she said, "No, want to stay here." Doug said to me, "I'm sure that's the last time we'll ever hear that!"



The first thing we opened was Kate's Fergus pajamas (from the David Shannon book). I found them online a few months ago and showed them to Kate, and asked her if she liked them and if she would rather have the blue ones or the purple ones. I guess she remembered, because as soon as she saw them in the package, she said, "Fergus pajamas!" She wanted to put them on right away, so present opening was interrupted for a couple of minutes.



This is a plush Mo Willems pigeon that says "Let me drive the bus!" when you squeeze it. The pigeon was a big hit. Kate held onto it while she opened her other presents.




Aunt Karen sent this cute little dragon costume. It's a hooded cape with spikes and a tail. Kate does like it, but she's been wanting us to wear it. (Doug says, "If she wears it, then she can't see it." Makes sense.)

This apartment doesn't have the best lighting for taking pictures. Our last place was definitely better, the way the light came in the window.



We went over to Scott's house for Christmas dinner. Scott and his daughter Kira gave Kate a bunch of dinosaurs that Kira used to play with when she was little. Dinosaurs are very exciting. Scott also gave us a nativity set. Kate has been playing with them all together. Witness this scene of carnage:



Kate also got some fun things from the grandparents (for which we are still charging batteries), and from Rebecca. Thanks so much for helping our little girl have such a fun and memorable Christmas!

Don't let the pigeon etch-a-sketch

I was looking at Mo Willems's blog this morning and saw these cute pigeon drawings sent in by kids, and I was inspired to dig up this picture from a few months ago. Kate was asking me to draw things for her on this little mini etch-a-sketch, and she wanted a picture of the pigeon (which was not easy, let me tell you). I've seen pictures of amazing etch-a-sketch drawings. It's such an ephemeral art form. What if you want to save your creation?

Lois McMaster Bujold, and a pigeon (coo!)

We went up to the University of Washington last night to see Lois McMaster Bujold, one of our favorite authors. This was the second "reading and book signing" that we've attended there which turned out not to be a reading, but she spoke and answered questions for a while before signing books. Kate was very interested in the toys at the bookstore and not at all interested in listening to these strange grown-ups, so unfortunately Doug didn't get to hear any of it. I suppose next time we do something like this we really should get a babysitter.



Here's Kate with a big Mo Willems pigeon. We currently have Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus and The Pigeon Finds a Hotdog out from the library, and Kate has been enjoying reading them over and over. (She's been practicing saying "Oh for Pete's sake!" and "Hey, I'm a curious bird!") So I was tickled when I saw this big pigeon at the bookstore. Apparently it was some kind of promotional prop, but they did say that there should be smaller versions for sale later this year.

The pigeon has his own website! Kate and I were much amused by the hotdog game.

Lois McMaster Bujold writes science fiction and fantasy and is best known for her Miles Vorkosigan series, which you could describe as space opera, but very good space opera. The "science" is mostly social and biological, with a few space battles thrown in for good measure. They're very character-driven, thoughtful, touching, at times very funny. And just so well-written. I can't give these books a blanket recommendation, because of some of the content, but I love them and keep coming back to them over and over. Memory is probably my favorite. A Civil Campaign, a close second, is absolutely charming and has been favorably compared to Jane Austen, with its regency romance flavor. We took along our copy of A Civil Campaign and got it signed. (I didn't want to drag the whole stack of books along, so we just picked out that one.)



It's been a few years since the last Miles book--Lois has been working on other things. We have enjoyed her fantasy works as well, but we are eagerly awaiting the next Miles installment next year. Yippee!