Kaa suggests Forster, but I opt for Koko

James has a cough today, so he's home with me while Isabel's off with her grandparents. We'd been hypnotizing each other as we watched Kaa in the Jungle Book (with James occasionally falling spectacularly as if Mowgli'd just pushed him off a branch, and, more often, strangling me with his arm coils), when James ran off to my room and came back waving a book. I thought, oh, good, enough boa constricting, let's see what he wants to read.

E.M. Forster's Aspects of the novel. Hmm. Thoughts of James, the budding literary theorist were quickly dispelled as James signed "Please milk Mama". So Marco was right. But I will say that James has astonishingly good taste in reading material--he always knows which books I'm in the middle of. He probably wakes up in the middle of the night and peruses my Goodreads selections.

Despite this, I decide to put on A Conversation with Koko instead while James has some milk. His interest in milk fades as he realizes that there is a gorilla using ASL on the television, and he goes over and looks her over, signs what she does, and looks back at me. It is really wonderful to watch his surprised, pleased face whenever he sees someone new signing.

Isabel, meanwhile, made her first foray into counting backwards last night, in the dark, in her car seat, very softly: "9, 8, 7, 6, 5...6, 7, 8, 9, 10" while swinging her feet in her new brown mary janes.