Scene: AJ's bath. AJ takes his bath in the only tub in the house, which happens to be of the jumbo-sized whirlpool variety. When he was a baby, I loved it because I could use it like a playpen while I took a shower. Now AJ loves it because it has so much wallspace for his various art projects. On this occasion, AJ is playing with a set of foam ABCs and numbers that stick to the wall when wet.

AJ: Mommy, come see my solar system.

Harriet: [sees that AJ has arranged the first letters of the planets in order across one side of the tub. He has his left hand on M and his right hand on S and is orbiting them around the other planet letters.] Wow, AJ!

AJ: M and S are moving because M is Mercury and Mars and S is the Sun and Saturn.

Harriet: Good thinking. What's that over there? [points to three carefully arranged rows, each starting with a letter followed by a space, 1 number, a space, and two letters.

AJ: That's my train station sign. It tells you what track the trains are on, what time they leave and where they're going in sign language.

Harriet: Can you show me?

AJ: Well, let me examine it. [He peers at his arrangement]. Well, this train is on track Q. It leaves at 1:53 and it's going to BO. That’s sign language for Boston.

Harriet: I see. That's very interesting. Where do the other trains go?

AJ: Well, WY is Wyoming. And DG is...I forget. Oh, DG is for Doesn't Go, because the train is broken.

Harriet: Thanks for the warning. Can we get out of the tub now?

AJ: Well, in a minute. I want to examine my signs some more.

* * * * *
AJ's been conducting a lot of examinations of things lately. We've been trying not to rib him about his sometimes unexpected vocabulary, although it's hard not to find it funny. Ironically, though, yesterday he asked me what "vocabulary" meant. "Is it something you say?" I explained that "it's all the words you know." "I know a lot of words. I can say everything there is to say in the whole world. I can even say bahbahgoodahhoola."

"What does that mean?"
"It doesn't mean anything. It's just silly."

I think this may stem from a conversation yesterday where I was trying to convince him that supercalifragilisticexpialidocious is a real word. He was having none of it, by the way. But apparently he has changed his mind. It makes me wonder where his brain goes when he sleeps.

* * * * *
I seem to be particularly susceptible to earworms lately. Sunday I had Mike Doughty's acoustic version of "Janine"� stuck in my head for much of the day. This morning I woke with Edith Frost's "Cars and Parties" on cranial auto-repeat until it was replaced with Canasta's "Slow Down Chicago." AJ seems to be having similar problems. Yesterday he was walking around humming the Wallace and Gromit theme music, even though he hasn't seen any Wallace and Gromit videos in months and months. This morning he'd moved onto "Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, Get Your Adverbs Here," which is one of the most insidious earworms around. My usual method of treatment -- thinking of other songs with tempos further removed from walking speed -- is failing me. Even endless repetitions of the super-fantastic eponymous Bonnie Raitt album that RSsent me yesterday, along with Rosanne Cash's equally superb and moving Black Cadillac is failing to remove "Slow Down Chicago" from internal airplay. Perhaps I should just give in. It's too hot to protest.

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