Aurora Wells

Yesterday morning I left the house before Aurora woke up so that I could go to the dentist and be home in time for Brian to go to work at a reasonable hour. The last thing I expected when I got home was to walk into a forest of Truffula Trees. (If you haven’t read The Lorax by Dr. Seuss yet, you really, really must.)

Almost every day with Aurora is like an amateur improvisational theatre production of whatever books or videos we’ve been exploring lately. If you use your imagination, in the above photo you can see four lovely Truffula trees (brooms & jammies), the Lorax (Monkey), and the Once-ler (Aurora) with an axe (comb). Off-camera: a Brown Bar-ba-loot (Daddy), a Humming Fish (Nemo) and a Swomee-Swan (Mommy). She and Daddy had a Truffula fruit (mango) for breakfast, but while the Bar-ba-loot liked it, the Once-ler wasn’t keen on it. Daddy told me that when he built the trees, she demanded, “I need an axe! I need an axe!” so she could chop one down to make a Thneed. It’s a bit alarming that Aurora relates to the Once-ler, the “bad guy” of the tale. I guess she’s not quite old enough to grasp the environmental message of the book, but Daddy thinks that’s a good place to start. She says that now that she’s the Once-ler, he’s not a bad guy anymore (see below, comforting the poor Lorax with a hug):

So, today we’re back to the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, with a bit of Cars thrown in for good measure. I thought that Aurora was Goofy today, but I just heard her commanding in a deep(ish) voice from her crib, “Mater! Don’t mock the ghost light.”

Also, for good measure, a photo of how I spent the US/Canada Olympic gold medal hockey match:

Making a multiethnic cheering stadium, of course!