Whoa!! That was a fast month.

Another Christmas come and gone. Maybe I'm a scrooge, but it wasn't really all that, know what I mean?

I mean it was cool, and the kids got nice presents, and we had a nice time with Pam's family and all, but in the final analysis, I wasn't that impressed. Maybe it's an indicator of my spiritual state, and I need to do something to maintain that.

While reading one of "The Magic School Bus" books the other night, Berit pointed to a picture of an open door and asked me how the illustrator drew it so that it looked open. So we got out some paper and pens and launched into a fun lesson on perspective. Examples I used included (but were not limited to) the old "Kids in the Hall" routine where you squeeze the other person's head with your thumb and forefinger. Berit dug it, though, and she did a pretty good job with the whole perspective thing. It lasted a few minutes before we moved on to writing "bubble letters."

Griffin got a haircut today. Now he looks like a boy. His 2nd birthday is in two days.

Berit and Rowan hung at home with me. I don't feel well, so we just drew pictures and made paper airplanes. They liked that. Berit showed me how she draws a brick house. I showed her how I did. She was trying to draw butterflies like Mommy does this morning - she frustrates easily... wonder where she gets that from?

It's my 38th Birthday, and I get off early to go to the Y to see Berit's dance recital. I'm kind of grumpy but Berit's dance lifts my spirits. She's amazing - tap, jazz, ballet - out there with older girls. She keeps the rhythm quite well and memorizes dance steps that would befuddle her old man.

Even during the ballet part, when she is the only one without slippers, she proudly keeps stride with the rest. She is full of joy in this, and likes to show me her dance numbers at home.

Berit was officially drummed into Brownies this evening. I missed the ceremony, but I will attend her Dance (tap, jazz, ballet) recital on Wednesday.

Griffin hit Berit in the head with the stick end of a mop tonight. He's problematic that way.

Rowan was dressed as a princess when I came home, and she sometimes mimics Berit in an attempt at an English accent while claiming to be the Queen of England.

Rowan says she wants to be a teenager when she grows up. Me too.

Berit brings home these little reader books that are just way too simple for how she's been doing, and the other night I asked her about it.

"You should get Ms. Cohen to give you the next level of books... these are too easy."

"I can't... these are green... I'm in green, which is the easiest."

I pretty much stressed out about my daughter being mistakenly pigeon-holed into the low-reader group - a type-A parent's nightmare - until I was able to go to school today and learn from Ms. Cohen that Berit simply picks the books out of the green basket. She is perfectly capable of picking the pink basket books, and now she will.

As an added bonus, I was leaving the classroom when Berit was coming in with her class from lunch. She was pretty psyched to see me, and asked that I stay and read a book to her class (which I've done in the past). I was pretty bowled over by her excitement to have me do that and weighing it against the benefits of returning promptly to work, I decided to read the story. It turned out to be a little story called "Charlie Parker Played Be Bop," which I thought was just spectacular! The kids had a lot of fun with it, too.

Tonight, while Pam is out and I am reading in bed to Berit and Rowan, someone tooted. Berit and I both denied having done it and turned to Rowan, who gives a big grin and states, "It must have been Mommy!"

The two of them just laughed and laughed and laughed about this until there was no tomorrow, and I just looked back and forth between the two conspirators marvelling at the weird and wonderous ways in which their relationship with each other grows and changes when I'm not paying attention.

So we're reading "Snowie Rolie," a book in which the sun in Rolie Polie Olie's typically winter-less world blows a bulb, causing the snow to fall. Rolie Polie Olie and his sister do all sorts of fun, winterish things, including sledding. That's where Berit (and not me) questions, "Daddy, why did they have a sled if they never had winter?"

And I'm the one writing literary reviews??

The kids and I are in the TV room watching "The Lion King," Griffin and I are tussling off to the side, and all of a sudden he just bends down and nearly bites my nipple off! My reaction was none too contained, and I'm sure I scared everyone as I screamed and pinned his head to the wall with my arm.

Two things: I have no idea how he so accurately found my nipple beneath my t-shirt. And secondly, I view this as the official onset of Griffin's terrible twos.