Thursday, August 28, 2014

Norman blew up a bunch of balloons for my birthday, so a large portion of Lucy's day was spent playing with those. Bopping them up in the air, hitting them with sticks, carrying them around and pretending it's a Mario Kart battle, etc.

She watched Norman play Super Mario Galaxy while reading the manual.

We watched Mulan, which resulted in her dressed up like this:

Played the Phineas and Ferb game on the tablet.

We went out to dinner, and I realized that I didn't have to do anything to distract her or keep her busy until the food came. She was just coloring her kids menu and talking to us, mostly. Sometimes I forget that the baby/toddler/preschooler years are behind us!

Dotty read her Service Dogs before bed.

Pretty uneventful day for her I guess. Mostly she was just really excited about my birthday and the balloons!

Wednesday, August 27, 2014

World Girl on the tablet.

Played outside for a while.

We went to the library. She got a Sofia the First DVD she hadn't seen before, and then proceeded to watch it all afternoon. Interrupted only by breaks to 1.) dress up in her Sofia the First costume, 2.) set up a tea party in the living room, and 3.) have me write down my party plans for tomorrow. (All reactions to what was going on on Sofia, of course. And I just so happen to be having a party tomorrow, so I really did write down my plans, and then she read them and had some helpful suggestions, such as that the grownups should drink their smoothies out of tea cups.) 

More house lizard schemes: this is the newest trap. The tiny Legos inside are "bugs", and there are doors for the lizards to go through. "They'll fit because they're skinny, and they walk on four legs. At least until I catch them and teach them to walk on two legs like people."

She and Norman wrapped my presents for tomorrow. Apparently she's had the idea for two weeks to build a box out of Duplos to hold her present for me. The little person is me, and the big L is for Lucy. So we'll know who it's from and who it's for.

Also this happened:

I read her part of a pretty technical book on figure skating. We covered ice science and zambonis and stuff. I learned some stuff! 

And then apparently she and Norman discussed trinitarian theology before bed. And she apparently jumped right to venerating Mary, so there's that. 1.2 billion people can't be wrong, right?

Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Tablet: Cat in the Hat show; Phineas and Ferb app.

Messing with the Wii Miis and settings again. Just poking around really. She typed out some more messages with my spelling help.

I made a bunch of water balloons. Norman and she and I had a water balloon party in the backyard. I hung some from strings from the monkey bars, so she got some swatting/batting practice in.  Then she spent quite a bit more time out there splashing in her little turtle pool, riding her bike, and who knows what all else.

At one point she was playing on her street map rug with some Duplo people... It seemed there was an earthquake (i.e., she picked up part of the rug and everyone said, "Aaaahhhh!")

Word Girl on the tablet.

I read her Family and Friends before bed.

Monday, August 25, 2014

Messed around with the Miis again. This pretty much always results in my spelling things for her so she can change their names. Then she figured out that you can send little messages within the Wii system (somehow?), and she had me spell "I love you" for her. Then she wrote another note that said "I love you too", and she only asked for help with the 'v' and the 'too'.

Watched VeggieTales.

Played that Phineas and Ferb game.

We went to the grocery stores.  In the car on the way home she asked how the people who write Bibles come up with the stories to put in them. Good question! And also it sounded like she thought "Bible" was like... a genre of literature, or something? So we talked about what translation means, and how Jewish people and Christians wrote things down a long time ago, and how some people go to school to learn how to read the stories in the original language and then they tell other people what they've found out. Then she asked, "But how did the first teachers know the things to teach?" Whoa. So I started with Jesus and how since Christians believe he's God, that means he knows things only God would know and he taught them to people while he was here and people wrote down what he said, and that's some of the Bible. And how other people an even longer time ago wrote down things that other people who talked to God, like Moses, taught people. So that means that Jewish people and Christians have all been reading the same stories over and over again for a really long time, trying to figure out what they mean and what God wants us to do. (So possibly she's even more confused now than when she asked? Yeah, religion is like that...)

I think I glimpsed her reading a comic book before lunch.

Watched Word Girl.

Read the Super Mario Galaxy manual for a while. It mentioned the Wii manual, so she wanted to know if we had one (presumably so she could read it, too, but I don't think we have it).

Read books about service dogs and guide dogs out loud to Norman.

Played outside. Some of this was spent trying to use her new hula hoop.

I read her the service dog book before bed.

Friday, August 22, 2014

Drew a picture of stuff that happens in Super Mario Galaxy.





Played Inventions on her tablet.

Showed Norman how to play the Phineas and Ferb game on her tablet.

Watched Daniel Tiger on her tablet.

We went ice skating with some homeschoolers. She talked to a couple of nice boys for a while. And there was a middle school aged girl there who is very good, so Lucy got to see what a kid can accomplish when they practice a lot (i.e., more awesomeness than even Mommy has currently achieved).

The subject of my turning 30 came up, and I mentioned that I will like that quite a bit because it's so round and even -- "it's three tens!" And she said that couldn't be true. So we did some math.



She remembered "to the power of" from that book, so she wanted to know what 4 to the power of 11 is, and I told her I'd need a calculator for that. Then she remembered she had a calculator on her tablet, and she spent quite a while messing around with that. And it's a scientific calculator, so she was doing all sorts of crazy stuff.

I read her a book about ice skating before bed.

Thursday, August 21, 2014

Played Super Mario Galaxy.

Read the Spooky Riddles book I left out for her last night. Later she read some to me, but she kept changing the answers!

VeggieTales in the tablet. The same episode. Also she doesn't turn up the volume very high, but keeps the captions on?

We talked house lizard schemes at dinner. She wanted everyone to come up with a different one.

Drew this:



It's a Rube Goldberg like that game she's been playing, but it uses stuff she actually has. And apparently she started by drawing the items, then decided how to put them together to do the thing that she is saying in the speech bubble ("knock over the block tower"). That's what happens in the game -- an old man shows up with a speech bubble with a picture of the end result, and that's how you know what you're trying to build.

[This is what the game looks like.]

Oh and at some point in the middle of the day (after she watched Daniel Tiger with the new baby), she decided Jane (her teddy bear) was going to give birth. I believe she had both a boy and a girl at Playroom Regional Baby Hospital, and everyone is now resting comfortably in the bedroom.

I read her I Need Glasses before bed. (Honestly, sometimes she just grabs things at random off the shelves at the library. I don't even know.)

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

She started the morning by showing me a pictogram invitation to Jane's surprise birthday party that she had drawn. I love her pictograms.

Then she had me help her write a note to lure lizards to us. She signed it "Lucy" instead of "human" so that, according to her, they wouldn't know if it was a human, another house lizard, or a squirrel or what, so they wouldn't be so scared. I spelled and she wrote "dear house lizards" and "from", and I wrote out a longer sentence. Something about an upper lower shelf in a bookstore? I don't even know, and I don't know where the note went.

Dolls.

Tablet: Phineas and Ferb secret agent game; simple machines/Rube Goldberg invention game; VeggieTales on Netflix.

Library. She played that typing game again. I mean, it's a program where you can make a storybook, but she uses it to just type a whole bunch randomly. Today she was messing around with the font and color after she typed it.

More VeggieTales on the tablet.

Legos.

Norman came home and they played Mario Galaxy. More discussion of outer space phenomena, including orbits.

I read her Clothesline Clues to Jobs People Do. Then we had a chat about what jobs kids can and can't do, and the age of majority, and what "hobby" means. And then she learned the phrase "Rube Goldberg" when she mentioned the tablet game to Norman.

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Whew, rough day today. Mostly just a whiny one. 

She played with her new tablet first thing. A Toy Story game, the PBS kids video watching app, and a whole bunch of painting app. (The painting app has some "stamps", one of which is a little fire flame. She drew a little stick person who had one of these on their head. She showed it to me and Norman, and we were like "???", and she said, "This girl is on fiiiiiirrrrre...." LOL)  Also apparently Daniel Tiger's mom is having a baby this week -- it's a super big deal. She is SO excited.

We went to Chuck E Cheese because I knew it wouldn't be crowded and we needed to get out of the house. Starting in a couple weeks, Tuesday mornings will be Bible study time, but for now...

[Horse riding game at Chuck E Cheese]

She wears the headphones because it's so darn loud in there, even without a bunch of kids. But then it's hard for me to talk to her. She got SUPER freaked out by the guy in the Chuck E Cheese costume. Although I don't know where she saw him because I didn't see him. That whole place is very hit or miss with her. But hey, we got to play skeeball!

She came home and didn't touch the tablet except to introduce it to the bouncy ball we got with our tickets. She mostly played Legos the rest of the afternoon, including building this "castle" which may or may not also be a house lizard trap:

After dinner she pretended to be a "junior female mailman" and delivered notes between me (in the craft room) and Norman (in the living room). 

We read Apes and Monkeys before bed.

Monday, August 18, 2014

Grocery shopping day. She got to try out her brand new answer to almost every question she'll get in public places for the foreseeable future: "I'm homeschooled!"

Played Super Mario Galaxy upon waking.

Spent a good long while with the dolls. She set up like this little bedroom thing inside an empty clear plastic tub even though she owns a dollhouse. ???

She and I played Scrabble. Kinda. We spelled words on the board. She is amazingly consistent at knowing what letter a word starts with, but anything after that she just kinda gives up. I got her to figure out the last letter in "leg" by telling her to pretend like she could see the word on a piece of paper in her head. She got it in a snap. Cool.

She and Norman played Super Mario Galaxy together. Sounded like they've actually been talking about, like, space science as a result of this. Like, planet, solar system, galaxy, star, etc.

After dinner I showed her her new tablet that came in the mail. She was quite pleased with taking photos and videos, and then she found the Netflix app and was very serious about that, which is weird because she can watch Netflix whenever she wants on the TV with the Wii. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (It's super cool -- it's a small Android tablet, but it has a kid's mode that can be controlled by a parent. I can pick which apps she can access and set time limits, and then I can also switch it to normal mode for the grown ups.)

I finished reading her a book about jobs in the video game design industry.

Bonus hot dog cart from over the weekend:

Friday, August 15, 2014

We awoke to find that Franzi had responded to Lucy's Mycroft coloring and had drawn a picture for us! This apparently spurred Lucy on to draw her own Mycroft (who she calls "Minecroft") comic, where Mycroft wishes for hands, but forgets to wish for arms.

She was very busy for a long time today playing with her wooden beads and stuff. At one point she stuck some of them onto some extra long pencil she has so that they are now marshmallows.

Which is convenient, because this afternoon when she was playing with Aunt Dotty, they built a bunch of tents in the living room for Lucy Campground. Where the tents are free to stay in, apparently.

Norman and I put a bunch of our old magnetic poetry pieces up on the fridge last night, so she had some fun playing with those today.

She had another idea about how to catch house lizards, but this time she drew a diagram of the plan. I'd show it to you, but the photo I took is crap. It involved tracing her hand onto the paper for the hand that shuts the door to the trap.

Legos.

I think she and Dotty played Mario Kart together.

She sat for a while and read a book about school sign language words to herself.

I read her Rocky and Daisy at the Park before bed, but I'm pretty sure she read this to herself earlier along with the sign language book, because she already knew how it went.

While Norman was putting her to bed, he told her about comparative advantage, and she told him about "fair sharing" (which is pretty much just division as explained by Peg + Cat). She said if she has 4 peaches and Norman had none, she could give him two, and then they would both have two and that would be fair sharing.

Thursday, August 14, 2014

Mario Kart -- before, during, and after a trip to a friend's house. She helped teach the friend how to play. And more Mii making.

At the friend's house she also played Hungry Hungry Hippos (which we had talked about, but she had never seen in person), and played with Playdoh.

Spent a long time building with her Duplos and Legos.

Spent a while playing The Price Is Right Wii game.

She colored this fan art (for lack of better word), and I took a photo so we could send it to the artist. 

 

Norman helped her write a check properly (with some old ones I gave her to play with).

Built this:

I read her Oh the Thinks You Can Think before bed.

And then apparently while Norman was putting her to bed, she asked him to teach her some more economics, so he taught her about trading, and how it can make everyone happier.

Wednesday, August 13, 2014

This morning she seriously sat on the couch and read like 5 Magic School Bus and Curious George books to herself. One of these days I'll stop being surprised that she is now a kid who just plonks herself down and reads books.

Then she messed around with the Miis on the Wii to change what they look like, which she loves doing.

Mario Kart.

Library Day. She played some Dora and Diego games on the computer and picked out some books. They had some letter magnets out, so we tried to spell some things, but they didn't have a very good selection of letters, so then we sorted them by color instead. There was one equals sign mixed in the letters (?), and she was like, "If you turn it this way, it looks like a number!" and I was like, "Yeah, two! In Roman numerals." And she was like [weird look], "But also the one that comes before twelve...?" and I was like [DUH], "Oh right, eleven." Then we put the equals sign between two of the same letter and left it there.

Played with wooden blocks and tried to build progressively taller towers. Then she was doing something else with them that also involved Duplo trains and action figures.

She made a sign to let house lizards know that we are friendly. She had Norman tell her how to spell "Help Wanted", then on the other side, this. (Norman drew the hearts; I wrote the "G".)

["I heart house lizards" and, roughly, "don't be scared of the big people, they're friendly"]

I read her How Much is a Million before bed. (My hunch that she would want more books about very large numbers was apparently correct.)

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

   

One of the first things she did was get out some costume stuff and dress up so she could perform a Frozen play, with her doing all the parts, apparently. She was in the kitchen quoting it word for word. (This clearly influenced by our Hairspray outing.)

Mario Kart.

Legos and Duplos.

Ice skating! We went about three weeks ago to see if she wants to take lessons, and we went again today. Dramatic improvement. She was really moving with the walker thingy. And doing stuff like holding up one foot. We both had so much fun!  Oh yeah, and like the whole time she was explaining everything to a group of (as far as I could tell) about 5 little kid imaginary friends, possibly the baby versions of the Mario Kart characters. Because she's older, so she can tell them about all the things they don't know about.

 

She read some comic books. At one point she came to tell us that the comic book says that the three boy ducks are Donald's nephews! Apparently this was something she had been wondering about?

We watched the Evening News (which haven't really done in a while), and then we had to talk about why Robin Williams was famous, and that sometimes the police make mistakes. Maybe we should refrain from watching it? She's obviously paying a lot more attention these days.

We read Millions, Billions, and Trillions before bed.

Monday, August 11, 2014

One of the first things she did this morning was make her own recycling bins. They each have a sign for which recyclables go in them (which is kinda weird, because all our recyclables get thrown together).

We went to the grocery stores. Every week she gets to pick one thing to buy for herself that I don't usually buy. Usually she picks cereal or pretzels or fancy fresh smoothie juice, but today she picked sushi. And she ate it all up for lunch and loved it. She also volunteered to sweep the garage when we got home? I think she just wanted to use the tiny, tiny broom that came with the garage.

In the car on the way home she was asking about time and clocks. "How many minutes are in an hour?" I answered and explained about the 12 numbers and the 5 minute increments and everything. "How many seconds are in a minute?" I answered. "And how many moments are in a second?" :-)

Mario kart.

Painting:

 

[I try to take very sneaky photos of her doing things, because if she knows I'm taking a photo, she gets distracted and does very cheesy poses!] 

[Sun, stars, cloud, moon, crayon, wand, and a basketball]

As a result of that math book we were reading a little while ago, she was reading this grocery store flyer:

and said that cheese pizza was "five to the ninety-nine power dollars each!"

She spent some time reading her Amelia Bedelia book. Then after dinner, she drew these:

 

She explained what all of it means. It's like hieroglyphics, seriously. It's a list of my chores, like Amelia Bedelia always has. I wish I could type out everything contained on these papers. I think my favorite is the drawing of the hand holding a tin can, next to a table, next to a poor person. "You can tell the person is poor because these dots are like... the things that come out of your face when you're sad?" "Tears?" "Yeah! The dots are their tears."  

Pretty much I feel like I just spent all day making these faces:

 

And then I read her another chapter of Amelia Bedelia before bed.

 

Sunday, August 10, 2014

   

Sunday = church. She made a boat out of a sponge, a toothpick, and a piece of paper that she decorated for a sail, because the Gospel reading today was about Jesus and Peter walking on water. She also proved that she can actually sing along with the hymns when I point to each word if she feels like it. (She picks up on tunes pretty fast, actually.) Oh, and the children's bulletin had a crossword in it, and she read and answered the first two question, but then she didn't want to write the answers in. (??)

After church = coffee hour at the park. She played on the playground for a while.

Today was extra exciting, because we went to a community theater production of Hairspray! She and I heard a commercial for it on the radio earlier this last week, so I looked it up. We both have the movie pretty much memorized, so I figured she'd like it. She was so excited and just kind of in amazed awe, and definitely dancing at certain points. She got a little antsy in the middle, especially during the parts that weren't in the movie, but she did quite admirably for a 5-year-old Lucy. (She wore her noise-cancelling earmuffs -- these are an absolute must for us at any kind of busy or loud event, especially theaters of any sort. She just does not handle loud noises well. Like, if you're reading this, and your kid has any kind of noise sensitivity, do yourself a favor, and just buy some, and let them wear them. Ignore the parts where 1.) they look out of place, and 2.) they are normally associated with your kid having some sort of diagnostic label. Just give them the earmuffs and make everyone's life easier and better.)  

We also met a couple of the actors afterward. (They were all standing around on stage, so I asked if she wanted to talk to them, and she's not shy!)

 

While we were waiting for the play to start, she read The Great Big Book of Families to herself. (Which is a really great book that we picked up from the library. Detailed illustrations that are fun to look at, and it does a great job of showing all different kinds of families -- including talking about the range of socioeconomic privilege -- very simply, straightforwardly, and without judgment.)

And on the way home she perused the playbill with the actors' info.

After we got home, she built this, which she called her "dream office".

During dinner she was looking at the calendar (a current fascination), and decided to spell out Labor Day so I wouldn't know what she was saying (like Norman and I do around her sometimes -- this drives her CRAZY). She read the letters off just right. I didn't really know she could do that.

We read Grover and the Everything in the Whole Wide World Museum before bed.

Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Library Day. She played on the computer and did a bunch of "typing" into a story-writing game. Mostly she just pounded away at the keys to type as many pages as possible. At one point she told the librarian that she was "a kid with a real work job". But she also typed some multi-digit numbers, which was good, as she's been trying to learn those. (Ya know, like, which numbers do you put together to write out "twenty-two" or whatever.)

Mario Kaaaaaart.

Legos.

She made a hat out of construction paper. She made like a door in it? And when you open the door there's a dragon sticker? This was plan B after she asked for raisins.

When we got back from the library we found a lizard on the mailbox! It was so cute! I tried to get it to climb onto my piece of junk mail, which it did, and then scampered right up my arm. So we kind of watched it hanging out being awesome on my arm for some moments, before it leapt to the ground and took off across the street like a shot. Turns out those things are fast and very springy. This of course led to more discussion about how, exactly, we can get the lizards to not be afraid of us so they won't run away.

She played on the computer when we got home, too. Some educational games, matching games, and then some Doc McStuffins and Charlie & Lola games.

She spent some time reading in that new chair. Not sure which books though.

At the library she asked me to find her a book "that says what's the biggest number in the whole world!" I got her one that talks about very large numbers and infinity, and we read those bits before bed. Two sentences into the page on infinity and she was like, "Oh! So counting just goes on forever!" There ya go. Mystery solved.

Tuesday, August 5, 2014

A short update of how we were awesome today:

Mario Kart

I'm in charge of gathering and delivering the food pantry food that our church collects once a month. Today (as usual) Lucy helped me deliver.

We made fruit kabobs. She saw the recipe in that Sesame Street cookbook last week, so yesterday I bought some fruit salad and we just stuck them on some skewers. She thought it was way cool.

She was reading gaming manuals again. And some other books of hers. Apparently if I go to my bedroom with the intention of reading, she will follow me and do the same. Plus she likes the new reading chair we just got this last weekend.

She turned on the Frozen DVD, but only watched the bonus features? I think she had that old-timey Mickey Mouse short stuck in her head.

We ate out for dinner, where she proceeded to surprise me by 1.) eating all her food, 2.) letting Norman and me have a conversation, and 3.) mostly sitting in her chair.

I read her a rather thorough kids' science book about how trees work.

Friday, August 1, 2014

Norman made her this Duplo tower later Wednesday night. It had exactly 100 Duplos. He showed it to her Thursday morning, and they counted the Duplos by tens, then put it back together, then knocked it over spectacularly, of course.

 

Mario Kart. 

They went to Target, and he bought her a calculator, which she had been asking for. She had fun seeing what it could do until she got frustrated with it. But what's new? And of course I did the only decent thing and showed her that you can spell "hello" with it upside down. 

We read a book about mail carriers.

Today, more Mario Kart. She worked hard and under Norman's coaching, finally unlocked something she'd been trying to unlock for a while.  She drew a picture of one of the characters.

[I'm not sure what's happening here, but she likes to try to tell whole stories with just pictures and arrows. I feel maybe Blue's Clues is behind this.]

She's been a bit obsessed with handing out her play money (bills and coins). Not sure what that's all about.

She watched a Blue's Room DVD about Blue getting her baby brother.

Currently trying to get her decide between ice skating and karate lessons for this upcoming semester. I think she's leaning toward skating.

I read her a (pretty boring and useless) book about adoptive families before bed. She noted that it was boring and useless, so I showed her another, better one, which she read part of before it was time for bed.