Spooky.

So, Marley is well into her fort-making phase. If she's alone in a room for more than three minutes, she'll dismantle any cushion-laden piece of furniture and begin stacking pillows and back rests into toppling shanties where she can read or hang out with a small menagerie of stuffed animals. She turns soft, kid-sized arm chairs onto their sides at my sister's house and drapes fuzzy throws over them before climbing underneath with Owen. Last week, when I went upstairs to the office, our soft, kid-sized armchairs were unzipped, and the cushions and bolsters were arranged in a miniature, white-foam Stonehenge. It took me way too long to shove everything back properly into the canvas slipcovers.

But lately, her forts, although structurally the same, have a new purpose. They are haunted houses. She helps others make the distinction with helpful signs like the one below, featuring a creepy ghost and his skeleton friend. Marley's unlike me in that she's into scary things. I mean, like the ghosts and monsters on Scooby Doo, which might be the four-year-old equivalent of, I don't know, The Sixth Sense? I don't watch scary movies. I don't want to see movies about the end of the world, either. I will stop reading a book that I've just started if it involves kids in some kind of distressing trouble. I was a high school English teacher, and have been tutoring since Marley and Rudy were born, and since I became a mom, I get a little paralyzed when I have to help with something like Night.

I hope Marley holds on to her fearlessness for a while. I think it depends on how long she holds on to her innocence. And I'd like that to last for a while, too. Be a kid, Bean! It looks like fun, especially the way you do it.