I have always had this cold. I will always have this cold.

This cold has overflowed my five-year-old’s memory buffer.

Claire: Mama, you always cough and sneeze.

Seth points out that the dances-on-fabric are an established circus art called aerial tissu, or silks.

Lilysea and her partner have two daughters through domestic adoption. Not surprisingly, her perspective on Juno is a lot deeper than mine.

Disney phone: Hi! I’m Ariel! You’re my first human friend!

Julia (delighted): Hi Ariel!

Disney phone: Hi! I’m Ariel! You’re my first human friend!

Julia (disgusted): No! Stop it! (Tosses phone aside, moves on.)

Big-girl-bed girl thunders into the room and climbs with some difficulty onto our bed:

“EHN! EHN! EHN!”

The entire bed bounces up and down like a trampoline.

“Julia JUMP! Julia JUMP! Julia JUMP!”

Parents reluctantly concede that further sleeping-in is unlikely.

And another thing I liked about Juno; it would have been so easy to make the cheerleader character a caricature, like Reese Witherspoon in Election, but they didn’t go there. And ANOTHER thing. Her parents were so right-on in the scene where she told them – so right on that I clutched Jeremy’s hand and hoped to God I would be that cool in that situation.

We got the tree undecorated at the appropriate time. Jonathan, Salome, Robert and Gayatri and the relevant children arrived, exchanged presents and made cookies, I am told; I fled to the comforting steam of Kabuki, where Re-cheng and I compared notes and were pummeled. Sweet.

We converted Jules’s crib to a toddler bed. She’s completely thrilled about her new freedom of movement, and much too excited to go to sleep.

You used to be able to rock her to sleep in your forearm. Now she can take me in a fair fight.