It’s fall in Seattle. Despite some people’s expectations, many trees do change colors. We have a giant maple tree in our front yard that is turning glorious yellows and reds right now. Moriarty came to me concerned the other morning and said I had to come to the kitchen to see. He wanted to show me the leaves turning on the maple. I explained this was normal and this tree would have all its leaves fall off and it would grow new ones in the spring. He just looked out at the tree, shaking his head, and solemnly said “Not looking good. Falling apart”.
He has a special knack for imitating our speech patterns. A few weeks ago we were going to late event and Pip warned Moriarty he wouldn’t have time for a bath when we got home. He told him he didn’t want to have a big fight later when there was no bath. Moriarty replied, “don’t worry. I won’t be like [imitating whiny voice] I want a bath waaa waaa waaaa. [normal voice]. I won’t do that.” That said, some basic words he still can’t say normally. He adds extra syllables to some words so the name Ripley becomes RI-puh-lee, and Duplo becomes DOO-puh-low. That one is hard not to repeat it’s so cute.
Many eventful things have happened in the last month. My close friend got married and I was the officiant. Moriarty was a flower child. He performed very well. In preparation he told us he was going to throw them “reeeeally hard”. He threw some pink petals in the air, some at the guests, and when he got to the end of the aisle dumped the rest out to make sure the bucket was completely empty. At the 3 day weekend wedding event, he also made an instant best friend named Titus, another 3 year old. Within 2 minutes of meeting each other were joined at the hip and spent the entire weekend together.
We also took a trip to Austin to visit the Kramer cousins. Clara and Moriarty hit it off extremely well. She likes to teach, he likes to learn. He’s excited by everything, and she was thrilled to have someone want to play with all her toys with her. He and Arthur also got on well. We ate lots of new exciting foods and discovered Moriarty loves BBQ ribs (as do all sane people).
He’s started in a new class, mixed age 3.5 to 6. Very classic Montessori. He’s thriving though struggles to remember to swap his outdoor shoes for his indoor shoes. Many Montessori tasks carry over into every life, like eating Cheetos with chopsticks. He’s still very helpful around the house. They learn Spanish at school but Moriarty is silly and mostly wants to speak Cat as his second language. He’s still obsessed with fire trucks and fire fighters. He was introduced to video games at the Kramers so Pip pulled out his old Game Cube and we’re teaching Moriarty the basics of classic Mario games.