One thing I really enjoy about Sydney getting older is her growing ability to play “let’s pretend.”

So the other week Sydney was browsing through the DVD rack while I was watching her and her uber-geek Dad was concentrating intently on his computer screen the next room over. Usually when Sydney gets into the DVD rack, it’s not because she’s going to watch anything; she enjoys the shelving and unshelving, and stacking DVD cases like blocks. But in this case she pulled a DVD out, held it up to me, and said “watch?”

I looked at the DVD she had chosen - it was a subtitled Japanese movie, Godzilla 2000. “You really want to watch Godzilla?,” I asked. “Godzilla…” said Sydney, in the slightly hesitant tone she uses when she’s learning a brand-new word. “Godzilla!” barked Matt from the next room. “You want to watch Godzilla! Great! Here!” he said, quickly grabbing the DVD and shoving it into the player. He sounded so proud.

There’s a lot of boring exposition at the start of the movie, so we skipped to a scene where a photographer, her driver and the driver’s daughter are in a SUV when they have to drive away very fast to avoid being stomped into protagonist paste by Godzilla’s giant feet. “Drive faster!,” the daughter character yelled, “drive faster!” Sydney watched the whole rest of the movie, making comments like “Godzilla scary” when Godzilla breathed radiation and “poor Godzilla” when another monster was beating up on Godzilla. Then Sydney asked to watch it again. She watched that movie¹ once or twice a day for the next week.

Flash forward a week - Matt and Kim, with Sydney and Maddox in their car seats, are driving to the vegetable co-op. Suddenly Sydney yells “look out!” Matt says “what is it?” Sydney pointed out the window and yelled “Godzilla! Drive faster! Drive faster!” The rest of that drive (and several other drives after) was enlivened by more Godzilla sightings.

Anyhow, below the fold are a few recent photos of Sydney and Maddox, taken at Kip’s birthday party.

It’s the only way to eat frosting.

Maddox smiles. This is pretty much all that Maddox does, actually. Well, this and crawling. And the diaper-soiling. And she nurses sometimes, but I’m not very involved with that end of things.

There are very few problems in a young girl’s life that can’t be solved with the judicious application of a pirate sword.

1. Keep in mind, for Sydney, “watching” a movie often entails playing in the same room where the TV is on and only looking up during the exciting scenes. (back)

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