Nathan and Elena Visit Nana's Country

Elena usually refers to my neighborhood as "Yenna's Country"--but last night, it was also Nana's.

At the Saturday Night rodeo 

Along with their parents, Nathan and Elena came over yesterday for the day and evening, finding Nana's room (and the contents of it) of great interest.

At one point, Elena came into the room where the adults were sitting, waving a quite personal item of Nana's in her hand:  "Nana, is this yours?"

"It is," Nana said, laughing.  "And I'd appreciate your putting it back where you found it."

When I went into Nana's room to see what they were up to, Elena asked me to hurry and help her zip up Nana's little yellow bag filled with four little bottles of eye drops "so I won't get in trouble...."

Using seven or eight of the dolls from my collection, Nathan made up a play loosely based on the Paddington movie.  Judy (whose voice I tried to give a proper English accent) was moving to Paris, but I was to direct her back to England after three days, saying that she didn't like it there after all because nobody would talk to her.

So far, Elena has expressed little interest in the Madame Alexander dolls, but Nathan is always fascinated by them as props in his improv productions.  Last night, English Judy and Jonathan ordered three breakfast tacos from the All-American car hop doll--possibly the first tacos delivered on roller skates?

Elena prefers writing letters on index cards, folding them up, and delivering them to the rest of us, saying, "Special De-Livery."  Sometimes she tells me the words to write, but mostly she draws squiggles and the receiver figures out the meaning.  "We just write letters to each other telling each other we love them," Nathan said.

Nathan and two members of his "Coming Home From Paris" cast.
The Tin Man is "Metal-top"--the robot
built by Jonathan Brown while Paddington is visiting
their home. Metal-Top's specialty is bringing people back from the dead.

Elena working on the house and other props