Cassie's Rules

I like to be Cassie from Dragon Tales. Yesterday, we were playing were playing out one of my favorite Little People stories---Animal Farm. As usual, the animals had kicked all of the people out and were being led by Napoleon the Pig. However, all of the animals, and especially the dragons, were sick of Napoleon's rules, so I, Cassie, staged a coup and deposed the pigs from power. Now, it was time for me to make up my own rules. There were a lot of them, but here are some:

1. No animals should drive school buses.
2. No wandering around in the street.
3. No flying airplanes.
4. No crashing airplanes into the animals.
5. No people allowed. (This was one of Napoleon's rules that was retained from the ancien regime.)
6. No eating the other animals. (The lions didn't like this rule.)
7. No standing on the roof of the house (The birds didn't like this rule).
8. No trolleys allowed.
9. No flying helicopters.
10. No reading. (This was another one of Napoleon's rules that was retained from the ancien regime.)

Rainbow Construction Update

As you know, when I grow up, I'm going to have everything painted in the color of rainbows. In addition, I'm going to have lots of interesting rainbow stuff. Here are the current plans:

Shelter: I intend to build a 50 storey rainbow colored house. Since it will have 50 floors, it will need an elevator with lots of buttons. There will also be lots of room in the house for all the animals I intend to have.

Transportation: I'm going to have a rainbow colored car too. But my car is a special car since it also turns into an airplane for when I need to fly somewhere. It will also have a button for it to turn into a cloud with a rainbow in it for times when one needs to get around via cloud.

Everyone is invited to visit my rainbow house and drive in my rainbow car. Also, I'll need lots of help with painting. I've already asked Mommy and Daddy to help me paint my house and car, but Daddy says we'll need lots of guys to paint everything rainbow.

It's Christmas in Dragon Land

Wth the holiday season upon us, "stuffed animal fun" has turned to Christmas. It seems that every day is Christmas in Dragon Land in our stories. Max and Emmy, a little boy and girl who come to Dragon Land, are always surprised to find it's Christmas morning whenever they arive there. The dragons always offer them lotsofinteresting presents. Most of these are contained in a kind of Russian doll arrangement of boxes. Emmy will open her gift, which consists of a box. Inside is...another box. Inside that is another box and so on for 72 boxes. At the end of the opening ritual Emmy will find a toy, which is often a stuffed dragon. The dragons are also very helpful when it comes to making sure Santa is in a good position to deliver gifts. In one adventure, the dragons helped a lost Rudolph fnd his way back to the north pole just in time for Christmas night.

My hero: Petula Clark

Petula Clark sings one of the best songs ever---Downtown. I like to sing it every time I got to downtown Walnut Creek. I also like to listen to the song at bedtime. Tonight, I got to listen to "computer songs"---Daddy turned on his computer and would play whatever I asked for. Naturally, Downtown was on the list. I love downtown.

Learning the 3 r's

As many of you who I've talked to on the phone know, the letter "r" is quite a troublesome letter for me. I used to pronounce "r" in more or less that same fashion as "w" or sometimes "l". However, my "r" is evolving. Lately, I've taken to sort of swallowing my "r"s instead of turning them into another letter. Daddy says that my pronunciation is coming to approximate that of Katherine Hepburn in her many movie roles (although my voice is quite a bit higher than hers---at least in her later years). The other person that Daddy thought of (and he figured Auntie Max would also notice this) is FDR. He's trying to teach me to say:

We have nothing to fe-ah, but fe-ah itself.

So far, i'm not too interested in saying this.

Romans v Barbarians

Yesterday, Daddy and I were watching football on TV when we noticed an ad for Capital One credit cards featuring out of work barbarians. I asked Daddy about the barbarians and noted that, at times, my table manners are likened to those of a barbarian. After some discussion of barbarians and what they liked to do, we invented a new game with Little People and blocks. First, we use the blocks to build a Roman city, which is inhabited by the Little People "Romans" and their livestock. At the front of the city is a Little People castle facade featuring a trebuchet for stopping attackers.

Next, Daddy rounded up a whole bunch of Little People "barbarians". These consist mainly of boy Little People wearing various hats (barbarians always wear hats). The barbarians also have an attack rhino in the lead. Finally, the barbarians slowly march toward the town with the intent of storming it. I, as one of the Romans, man the trebuchet and try to bowl down the barbarians to repel the attack. This is lots of fun. Some of the attacks succeed and some fail, but it's really exciting as the barbarians draw near. When they get really close they shout "ladders" and start scaling the wall. The attack rhino will often punch a gap in the wall through which the other barbarians can enter the town. Daddy said his barbarians were people called the Visigoths, who he said were particularly tough barbarians.

Grr-grr-grr go the barbarians.

Compasses

Today, Daddy and I played a new game with Thomas and his friends---navigation. First, Daddy showed me how to make something called a compass using a magnet, a sewing needle, and a small piece of cork. It was very surprising how the needle kept pointing in the same direction. Next, Daddy got out his real compass, and we used it to figure out the navigation of the Thomas guys. First, Bulstrode the barge mounted the compass in the bow of the barge and managed to navigate in all sorts of directions. My favorite direction is west. Next, we got out the engines and tried to determine the headings of the various tracks that are laid out. The engine would drive a little way then stop. We would then take a compass reading and the navigator (me) would tell the engine what its heading was. While initially, we confined ourselves to north, south, east, or west, after a time we adopted more sophisticated directionsw such as northwest and southwest. Daddy even suggested that there were directions like south by southwest that further distnguished our headings. I like compasses a lot.

Cruisin'

I've discovered that my old skill at "cruising"---standing up and moving while holding onto something for balance---is especially useful with a broken leg. Yesterday's achievement: washing my hands all by myself. To accomplish this, I found my stepstool in the bathroom, moved it in front of the sink, crawled up it and then, using the sink for balance, managed to hoist myself up. From there things were easy. I was able to reach across to turn on the faucet, release some apple soap from the dispenser and wash my hands. Best of all, I managed this all by myself. Mommy was a bit concerned about the risks of falling in this process, but was impressed at the initiative and resourcefulness of my approach.

Cranky and the Foundry

I'm really moving about much better these days. This greater mobility, combined with a Thomas arrangement by Daddy and I in the shape of an "L" around the edges of the room, has led to renewed excitement for the adventures of Thomas and his friends. Over the weekend, we thought of a new adventure---the tale of Cranky and the Foundry.

One day, Thomas and his friends were going over the very long bridge through the Misty Mountains. Being a very windy and blustery day, the bridge swayed in the wind and some of the trains, including Toby, derailed and fell into the canyon below. Toby couldn't get out, so Sir Topham Hatt called on his trusty crane Cranky to pull him out. Cranky did so, but then he refused to put Toby back down onto the ground. Sir Topham Hatt grew annoyed at Cranky's stubbornness and insisted that he put Toby down.

No. No. No. I won't do it.

said Cranky. Finally, an exasperated Sir Topham indicated that he'd haul Cranky off to the foundry t be melted down for scrap if he didn't change his mind. Of course, Cranky wouldn't budge, so my big dump truck came and hauled Cranky off to the giant kiln at the foundry. (The kiln is a wicker garbage can.) There Cranky was melted down and Sir Topham ordered a new Cranky. The problem, as you can already guess, is that the new Cranky was as stubborn as the old Cranky. Well, it didn't take very long before he found himself at the foundry, only to be replaced by a Cranky that was even worse. And so on. And so on.

The Mystery of "Ya"

You may recall that some weeks ago, I had taken to saying "ya" rather than "you". Mommy and Daddy were both mystified as to where I had picked up this mannerism. We've now uncovered the secret---the Weezy character in Dragon Tales uses this expression in her speech in the show. Since Dragon Tales is currently my all-time favorite thing, I like to imitate the characters whenever possible and that includes using "ya". Weezy also uses the expression

Loooooove it!

a lot. Both Mommy and I like to use this too.

Small Milestones

With my broken leg, sometimes it's the small milestones that count. I recently figured out how to get in and out of my bed and up and down from the couch all by myself. Mommy showed me how to swing my hurt leg up on the bed or couch first. Next, I push off with my arms and the good leg and kind of climb up to the place I want to go to. I showed Daddy how I could do this all by myself---no Daddy transport services needed!