Week of October 20, 2014

Play date with church friends.

Copying the titles of songs from the Phineas and Ferb soundtrack on paper and the chalkboard.

She spied a poster behind a counter at our grocery store above a fire extinguisher that said "P.A.S.S." and she wanted to know what that meant. Once I figured out what she was talking about, she got spelling, mnemonics, acronyms, and fire safety all at once! (It stands for pull the pin, aim, squeeze the trigger, and sweep it back and forth.) And we talked about when something can be solved with a fire extinguisher and when you need to just get out and call the fire department.

We read a book about time zones on Monday or Tuesday. Then on Sunday she heard one of our fellow parishioners talking about how she used to live in Hawaii and Lucy jumped right in with questions about which time zone Hawaii is in and how many hours difference it is and when exactly she changed her clocks when she moved here.

Made a conveyer belt (her words) for her cash register out of a whole bunch of colored tape.

Library. Dora game and that story typing game. She figured out how to color the backgrounds of the pages and draw shapes.

Turned our coat closet into an elevator with the addition of a piece of paper with two arrow buttons on it.

We read a book about keeping lizards as pets.

She's started making plans again for the hotel she's going to open in our house. This is a picture of all the amenities that room service can provide upon request:

[Bibles, soap, pads of paper, pens, bottles of water, candy, newspapers, iPods, .... and I kinda lost track of what was happening after that]

Lots of Phineas and Ferb (show and soundtrack).

We've been taking walks (well, she mostly rides in the wagon) around the neighborhood and to the post office some days.

Last skating lesson of the session and she passed her test! And we signed her up for the next session at her request. At this point she seems to be gunning for hockey player in a year or two.

Sunday school: talked about about the greatest commandment and another is like unto it. And she remembered what they talked about last week! "They were trying to trick Jesus by asking him a question about a coin with their leader on it." I'm just amazed that she was paying attention.

We took a walk in the forest-y part of a park today, and I started explaining about the Doctor Who episode last night (which she did not see), but it turned into a discussion about the oxygen/carbon dioxide cycle.

Then we walked to a trunk or treat at a church down the street from us (she dressed up as a fairy princess). Then we played at the park for a bit. Oh, and we saw some raccoons! Just hanging around a tree in a neighbor's front yard in the middle of the day just as cool as they could be. A different neighbor had some major tree work done a couple days ago -- I think maybe they were displaced. They were cool to see, though.

[She drew the plant on the piece of paper, see? (This is at a friend's house.)]

[House lizard flag]

Week of October 13, 2014

We read a book about Picasso. We talked about his art and what we liked.

It was 10/13, so we watched her first two X-Files episodes. (I solicited opinions from my fellow adults on the least scary episodes.) For one of them I had to explain the basic concept of World War II.

We've been reading a book about building fairy houses because house lizards.

More nail hammering.

Plenty of kicking around the backyard. She put her skateboard in her turtle pool to pretend to surf.

She found this emergency crank-powered radio/flashlight we have that does bare a striking resemblance to a video camera, so she was going around filming things for a news report:

And then she drew this on her chalkboard to turn it into a TV. (In her words, there's headlines at the bottom, a weather warning at the top, and the reporter is talking about house lizards, which is why she has a flower on her shirt, and you can't see her legs because she's on the TV.)

Library. Dora computer game (costumes and cooking and gardening).

We walked to the park (she rode her balance bike -- which is pretty much too small -- pedal bike time is coming!). Most of the walking to and from involved learning to be safe and follow instructions. She was very kind to a little boy (3yo?) there who followed her all around.

She brought me this, which is a felt finger puppet I made for her, and a pair of scissors, and asked me to cut the eyes off it. Of course I asked why. To turn it into a costume for house lizards. Otherwise they wouldn't be able to see out. I told her maybe we should wait until we've caught some and trained them not to be afraid of us.

Girl scout meeting: learning about animals. They made a bald eagle out of everyone's handprints and built a paper cup bird feeder.

She's been writing lots of numbers on things. Filling out a lot of fake checks. Trying to spell short words and actually doing a half-decent job.

Skating lessons, of course. That's chugging along.

She's been spending a lot of time watching Dotty play a Pokemon game on her DS. Dotty is a saint -- I would have been fed up with all the backseat driving long ago.

Sunday school and children's church -- they talked about giving to God and St. Francis. She wrestled with her friend. And she drew this after announcements:

["sign up" -- pretty sure that's a hand holding, a pen, writing on a piece of paper]

Someone was talking about signing up for hosting coffee hour, greeting (and passing out bulletins, prayer books, and hymnals), and bringing flowers for the altar. She apparently was listening, because she drew all three of those things!

We went to a corn maze farm with the Girl Scouts. Navigating a 2.8 mile corn maze with a map (and the obvious -- seeing corn growing!); corn box (like a sand box, but... with corn); petting zoo; giant tire/tube slide climbing structure; learning what the "buddy system" means; introducing her grownups to other grownups.

[See? Corn box.]

[On Daddy's shoulders]

And of course endless episodes of Phineas and Ferb, and talking about Phineas and Ferb, and Phineas and Ferb inside jokes, and I bought her a Phineas and Ferb soundtrack CD. And due to Candace's influence, we had to have a talk about not referring to someone as your "boyfriend" without at least talking to him about it first.

Week of October 6, 2014

This week's theme was apparently "make stuff with my hands". She's been super into building outside -- this includes heaving heavy things like bricks up into her play fort, wrapping an old hose around all sorts of stuff up there, and hammering nails into scraps of wood (some of which we found in a curb pile on our way walking back from the post office one day this week). She's also been using her scissors a lot to cut out shapes to construct things. She made a house lizard shirt and tried to make a Vanessa costume for her teddy bear Jane (but the project was thwarted by the Scotch tape not sticking well enough to the piece of thick plastic sheeting she was using).  Also capes for Duplo animals:



And pathways and sidewalks made from all sorts of blocks, including, at times, dominos:

Speaking of house lizards, it turns out Jane is going to be the priest of their church. And Lucy is going to be their "Lord", so their church will mostly be "Lucy-themed". (These are her words, obviously.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

We went to a big book sale and bought a bunch of great stuff, including two books on lizards/reptiles. She spent a good portion of the trip sitting in her stroller reading a large easy reader volume about DC superheroes. Possibly she read the whole thing. When she was done with that, she spent some time looking at the map they gave us at the door.  She read that we should leave the map for other people to use when we were done, and suggested this to me. I told her we didn't need to, but then she pointed out that it said it on the map. And then when we got home she said if our reusable shopping bag broke, we could take it back to Harris Teeter and they'd give us a new one. I told her I didn't think that's how that worked, but she pointed to the bottom of the bag where it said exactly that!  Mommy needs to do more reading, apparently.

At the library she found this fire safety sheet that had a fire extinguisher, a smoke alarm, and exit signs on it. She decided since we have the first two things in our house, but no exit signs, she would make some. Which she did, with stickers and no help from me.

This Lego Friend went shopping for some "cool new outfits".

We're planning a trip to Disney World, so one afternoon this week we decorated out Magic Bands. Temporary tattoos and nail polish. (She made style and design decisions and I executed them.)

At church today they went through the first 5 of the Ten Commandments and she drew this. "God", "1 God", a smile ("for nice things, etcetera, etcetera"), a cross ("take a day of rest the day you go to church"), a heart and me and Norman ("love your mom and dad!"). Nailed it.

She's spent the last two days pouring over this really cool book we got at last year's book sale.

Bedtime reading matter has included Phineas and Ferb books and The Boxcar Children (again). 

And she's been using the tablet to watch Phineas and Ferb, of course. And to go to the local shopping mall's website. She just loves doing that for some reason. She also spends a lot of time looking at the mall maps that she picks up pretty much every time she's there so now she has like 3 of them.

And skating lessons are still going well.

And we went to the library and she played that story writing game again (her favorite). And she was writing all these stories just using the "stickers" (little icons) that they have. But then the game decided that she had used up her allotment of stickers, so she clicked on the sticker she wanted, and the name of the thing shows up beneath it, so she just typed the name of it instead!

Monday, September 22, 2014

Ack! This never got published last week! Okay, short version: she asked to make dinner. We figured out something she could make (sandwiches and salads), we picked the ingredients, we bought the ingredients, she cooked, I was her sous chef. It was totally cool!

And also she made some art.

Week of September 29, 2014

Okay, we're gonna try this summing up the week thing.

She spent a lot of time outside this week. The weather has been lovely! She's been digging and "cooking" and swinging and getting herself all disgustingly wet and muddy -- it's great!

Still watching some Phineas and Ferb, but not as much as a couple weeks ago. It's cooling.

She asked to make gelatin, so we did that this week with grape juice. She decided she didn't like it.

She asked to make an apple pie, so we did that this week. She mostly just helped with mixing the ingredients for the crusts. Then I did the rest of it. But she came back to help use the cookie cutters on the extra pie crust to make cookies. She decided she doesn't like the pie. (??? It is delicious if I do say so myself.)

She wrote this on the calendar with absolutely no input from me (meant to say "driving eve"):

Still talking about the house lizards all the time. Here we have a note written in lizard tongue sticking out language (obviously):

Grocery shopping. Library. She played with that story writing computer game again. It's a big hit.

She also used her tablet this week to have Google translate say things out loud again. And she finished a section of her geography game. And she and Norman worked some more on the Phineas and Ferb game.

Girl scout meeting. She got inducted or whatever they call it.

Skating lessons. She's doing awesome. 

She wanted to try climbing the trees in our front yard. She got up pretty high in this one!

Lots of Duplos and Legos, as always. 

She tried to pour herself some juice. That was an adventure, but she got the juice out of the fridge and got herself a cup and everything all by herself without asking. Which I actually consider a step in the right direction.

Sunday school, we talked about St Francis and made bird feeders out of pipe cleaners and Cheerios.

Then we went to our church's Blessing of the Animals this afternoon. She got her teddy bear blessed and played on the playground for awhile. :-)

Bedtime reading has been books about Lego Friends and Disney Fairies and assorted other advertainment, but ::shrug::  

Oh yeah, and when Norman and I were cleaning her playroom, we found a strip of paper where she'd written all the numbers up to 20 or so out in a row, mostly correctly. This is a big deal! She didn't want to write most numbers for the longest time. And she's also been writing random letter and number combos on some old checks I gave her to play with.