Vivian, The Caboose

Vivian is a very interesting caboose. She finds her brothers to be equal combatants or welcome friends--roles that interchange easily and quickly. She has become shockingly adept at catching lizards, a thing she does so casually that one wonders, even Jon and I who are accustomed to seeing this, if the lizard is plastic or real. She languidly allows the lizard to dangle off her fingers or scoot up her arm and across her back with a nonchalance that is, what shall I say, captivating.

She's turning 4 on May 2nd and she's very enthusiastic about being 4. It means starting kindergarten in the fall and starting violin lessons. It means a big fluffy pink cake (a pink azalea cake is what it is called in the 1950 Betty Crocker cookbook). She still wears pull-ups, something which is highly disconcerting to her mother, who believes that Vivian grasps intellectually the art of being toilet trained, and that her anatomy has been properly "fixed" such that she is physically capable of the art of being toilet trained, which leaves one to assume that Vivian intentionally refuses to abandon the pull-ups because she loves the array of princess prints the pull-ups offer. This is highly annoying.