The Things They Say

the year in photos and memorable quotes...

// Clementine, wondering aloud: Is this real life? Are we living in Chinese people's dreams, because they're sleeping right now? And when we're sleeping Chinese people are living in our dreams?

please note: dreamcatcher earrings. December

// Josie, in a similar vein just yesterday: You know what I can't stop thinking about? Other people's lives!  What is Clementine doing right now? [She was playing tennis] What about Anouk? I know she has a white couch from her Zoom. And a little brother. And I wonder what Grandma Pat is doing right now. Probably sewing. Having fun. Maybe eating lunch.

April

// The girls have been wandering into our room around 4:30 am and they get back to sleep and we don't.

Me: you girls have to stop coming into our room. Mommy and Daddy have to sleep.

Clementine: So do we! That's why we come into your room!

dressed up for a walk, April

// So 2020: Josie calls it "hand sanz-zi-tizer".  (I should correct her but I don't.)

Halloween: I'm a talented unicorn!

//  Josie: "I saw it in human!"  It took me a minute before I realized she meant "in person".

watching a movie with the squad, April

// Clementine and Josie pronounce delete as dee-LATE as in "did you dee-LATE that photo?" Again I should correct them but I don't.

Front porch session, October

// Josie says everything with a flourish but also with so much earnestness.  Luke presented her with an English muffin for breakfast, spread thickly with jam, and she exclaimed "An English muffin...with strawberry jam no less!" He thought it was so funny "with [x] no less!" has become a family saying.

"Let me do your makeup", April

                                 


// Josie, musing on a walk, "I don't like the way mulch smells, but I love flowers growing."[shrugs]

April

                                          


// Both girls will see a man running shirtless and ask, "Why is he only wearing nipples?" [dissolve in laughter] Luke went outside barefoot and Clemmie asked, "aren't you cold? Only wearing feet?"

botanical garden, July

                                    


// Josie lost her first tooth and Clementine inquired: "What are you going to ask the tooth fairy for? Something for both of us?"

before the outdoor screening of Coco

                                       

// Clementine sizing up someone new: How old is she? How many teeth has she lost?

French girl haircut, November

                                          


// Josie looking at our snow-covered roof: Our roof is pitch-white!

zoo, November

                                                   


// Josie arranging all of her most-loved objects around herself at night:

December 2019

// Clem to Luke: Why don't you wear pajamas? Is it because bad guys might come in the house and you want them to see all your muscles? And all your moves?

Luke: (laughing) no, that's not it.

Clem: Oh. Is it because you get sweaty?

before the new couch was delivered, September

                         


// I whispered something to Clementine and Josie said: WHATEVER YOU SAID, IT'S NOT FAIR!!

zoo, September

                                          


// Josie was crying about something Clementine did to her and ended it with "I was adding the finishing touch! [wail]" I burst out laughing - I had no idea she knew that phrase.

zoo, November

                              

// Clementine twists and cracks her back - POP POP POP POP - a maneuver she calls "cracking my back knuckles."

Ghouls in the Garden scavenger hunt, October

                                                     


// Clementine watching a polar bear hunt a seal during a heavily dramatized scene in "Night on Earth": "can the seal hear the music? Is that why it can get away?"

early quarantine, 2020

// Clementine, regaling my parents with gory details of Josie's cut finger that necessitated an ER visit: there were THOUSANDS of drops of blood!

 

and then...

// Josie skipped out of the ER and when she saw the COVID triage tents she said excitedly: can we go to that circus?! (During any other year we would have gone to Circus Flora in June).

June

// Josie knows precisely when she received all of her toys... she picked up a Barbie and said, "I got her for my fifth birthday, when I turned fifth."

October, with the last mask Walgreens had

// I started listening to In the Heart of the Sea, a book I had read about in The Writer's Almanac e-mail. I'll listen to this audiobook then listen to Moby-Dick, a book I don't recall reading or certainly not as as adult. I was explaining this to Luke (and having him listen to the description of harpooning, killing, and breaking down a whale in In the Heart of the Sea) when:

Clementine and Josie: I know what Moby-Dick is!

Me: You do?

C and J: it's a book about a whale who bites a man's leg off and they are on a ship called the Peacock or something.

Me: How in the world do you know that?!

C and J: we listened to it in Ramona! Ramona's mom is in a book club.

{They've been listening to Ramona Forever at night - then they produced the book to show me the passage.}

Clementine's family portrait with chickens, October

// Watching America Ninja Warrior and thinking up their nicknames a la Flex Labreck.

Clementine [echoing Luke's idea]: Prime Time Clementine!

Josie, not missing a beat: CRIME TIME CLEMENTINE! 

Checkup, June. Bunny showed up wearing a hat made from "a broken bra"