Teddy is the Village Green Preservation Society

It's officially Margaret's third birthday. The weekend is full of events celebrating the occasion. It started today with a party at school in her honor. Then she had her celebratory cupcake after dinner. And tomorrow, there's a parade celebrating her birthday. (Actually, it's the annual Cherry Blossom Parade, but we've been talking about how it's for her. Not sure how hard we'll push the parade because she shouldn't get too carried away.) Lastly, her CT grandparents are coming into town tomorrow, so we'll have a full weekend honoring Margaret.

Given all of the attention that will be bestowed on Margaret this weekend, I figure that it's appropriate to write something about the boy (and the dog), although some pics of Margaret-related events are included at the end of this post.

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Teddy likes yard work. Of course, every kid likes busy work of some sort. For example, Margaret likes "washing the dishes," and both of the kids like to play around with Tupperware (which involves scattering it all over the place) as I cook dinner. Teddy seems to be particularly fond of sweeping and raking stuff in our yard. Now, we're somewhat challenged in this task, as our "yard" is so small that it's basically our front sidewalk and a small patio in the back. But Teddy doesn't mind. Almost every weekend, we have a routine that involves sweeping up our small part of the sidewalk. Teddy is so enthusiastic that he often insists on dominating the brooms. We have three brooms - two big, one small - that we use for outside stuff, and Teddy often demands two of them for his work. If someone, say Margaret, tries to take one of them from him, he howls. The result is that we often let him fiddle around with two of the brooms while I do the real work with the remaining one. Not that there's much real work as our part of the sidewalk is so small, but it occupies him, so we're willing to spend time puttering around in front of the house while he stumbles around with his brooms.

It turns out that the only one who takes this job seriously is Maddie. She has always liked yard work. When we lived in Pittsburgh, she always liked to "help" shovel the snow. Which involved her pouncing on the snow shovel or jumping in the air to grab the snow when I tossed it out of the way. She does the same for leaves. Although she still shows the same dedication to the job these days, the boy is a bit confusing for her as he doesn't do much with his tools. Instead, I sweep a few things out of the way while Teddy ambles around with his brooms. Maddie is invariably attentive, dropping into her Border Collie crouch in front of my broom, but the whole scene involves a lot of commotion without much actual action.

People who pass us on the street tend to be quite amused. They'll say things like "You've got some good little helpers there," referring to both Teddy, with his brooms, and Maddie as she stares at my broom. I respond with something like, "They like to think they're helping."

As other evidence of our "philanthropy" in the neighborhood, Margaret and Teddy have a brick dedicated to them in our local park. During an early morning walk with Maddie, I noticed a brick near the Rose Park flagpole dedicated to two of the neighborhood kids. After checking with their parents, I found out that it wasn't too expensive to buy a brick to commemorate our own kids. So Margaret and Teddy are now immortalized near the flagpole at 26th and O.


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Given that it's so difficult to find personalized items with our kids' names, no one should get confused about the provenance of that brick. (As I'm sure I've said before, "Margaret" and "Teddy" are apparently quite out of style - too old fashioned, as evidenced by the elderly candy stripers at the hospital who often said things like "Such a lovely name. Don't hear that one very much these days." or "I had an aunt named Margaret!" I keep thinking that the revival of schoolmarm names like "Abigail" and "Eleanor" portends a return to popularity for "Margaret" and "Teddy," but they don't seem to have caught on yet.)