Summer's Almost Gone

This was the summer Clara and Margaret started to believe they could swim. A friend gave us swim vests, and they jump into the water and paddle around like puppies. I hope we can take real lessons this winter at the local YMCA. They progressed from holding on the sides of the pool to swimming in the middle of the water. Clara now tells me, "I'm big, Mama, I can swim, all bymyself." Bymyself is one of her favorite people. Bymyself does a lot of things around our house. She gets dresses, she helps sweep up, she brushes her teeth. Another new resident is Margaretself. She, too, likes to work independently. The Self Sisters are very busy.
"What's going on?" is Clara's newest greeting. The other day, she asked the question, and then answered it herself with, "Nothing much." It's funny to hear her imitating us. She's got Margaret to answer, "Not much."
The other day, I came up on Clara as she was finishing a call on her fake cell phone. She ended with "Okay, see you soon." I said, "Who are you talking to?" and she said, "Bus." With Clara, you have to stay nimble to catcher her references. If you don't, she becomes enraged. Luckily, I knew she was talking about a series of books we had brought about three school buses and their adventures. So I said, "Who? Sandy or Barnaby?" and she said, "Toby." Then she shouted, "Toby! Come! Come to my house!"
Margaret has come to believe magazines are created just to carry ads for go-go's, her term for cars. She likes nothing better than to go through a magazine, screaming with glee and ripping out pages with cars on them. We don't get that many magazines (I have no time to read them) but the ones we do get end up in shreds.
Roxy called in sick yesterday morning, my last day of work for the AJC. So I took the girls with me to the downtown office, where they met and charmed everyone. Even the editor of the paper. It's amusing to me how some people have no idea how to talk to children. The editor talked down to Clara, just as she talks down to everyone, but Clara wasn't having any of it. She frowned when Julia put a pink post-it-note on her pink Croc, and said, "These don't go on shoes." When an almost 3 year old has more social grace than the editor of a large newspaper, I know I did right in leaving the paper. With the girls along, I certainly had no time to be sad when I turned in my computer and badge.
In fact, I felt a little giddy as I left the building. I should have done it years ago.