ARIE AND THE COUNCIL OF THE WOODEN BIRDS

This is Arie.  In the past few months he and I have gotten to know each other quite well; I go to his house twice a week to keep tabs on him while his mom teaches art.  On the days I don't see him, he goes to the house of a small friend.  Three days out of the week he has a playmate his own age; the rest of the time he has me.

Last week his small friend was visiting family out of town, so Arie and I got to see each other every day, and he came to my house.  Arie calls it "my house" too, not because of any misunderstanding on his part, but since I always refer to it as "my house," he's deduced that that's the name of the place.  In our conversations he calls his own home "your house" for the same reason.  Pronouns are hard when you're two.  

In my house, a collection of wooden ducks and one wooden goose lives among the books on the shelves in the living room.  Three of them were my grandma's and presided over the bookshelves at her house, and one came from Mark's mother to round out the collection.  I like to think the wooden birds add sophistication to the room, but maybe they just give the impression that I have a strange fixation with ducks.  Most adults don't say anything, but no one younger than three who has visited has failed to comment.

Arie was particularly interested.  I brought the ducks and goose down from the shelves one at a time until they were lined up in a row, all looking at Arie, as though he had been called to appear before the Council of Wooden Birds and was speaking to them about important matters of state.  He sat with them for a long time (as time is reckoned with two-year-olds).  He counted them carefully (with varying results - sometimes four, but often five) and seemed quite comfortable in his position as ambassador to the Bird Council.  The birds, if I read their wooden expressions correctly, approved of Arie as well.