Wednesday, December 16, 2015

Today Lucy made a paper snowflake, watched Phineas and Ferb, filmed a 6-part Christmas musical with her nativity figurines, went to the library and picked out three books and a movie, filmed the two of us having a conversation about glitter and/or ponies and/or boys, helped me make the dinner she picked out for us to make from her cookbook, and when I told her what the word "tolerate" means, she thought of a relevant example from her own life. I also told her that platypuses secrete milk all over their bodies so their babies just suck on their mom's fur, and she said, "Oh, that must be why when Candace was Perry, she sweated milk!" And thus we were both delighted.

Wednesday and Thursday, August 26 & 27, 2015

Wednesday:

Library, as usual. Norman put a hold on the Lumberjanes collection that had an issue she hadn't read in it, so she pretty much just plonked herself down in the children's section and read it. While she did that, I looked through all the juvenile graphic novels and picked some out that I thought she might like. She read two of them while we were there when she was done with Lumberjanes. Then she drew a picture. Then she made friends with a brother and sister (the sister's name was also Lucy) and they bonded over Lego books.

She made me a bracelet! Clever design, really. (A strip of newspaper and foam stickers)

Oh and she finished that fish lantern that we got in the Kiwi Crate.

And she wrote "LUCY MOM B-DAY" on her leg, reportedly because those are the words she can spell.

Thursday:

She's been all over her Girl Scout manual the last few days. She's been like doing some of the activities and reading the whole thing (again). Some stuff about money and who knows what all else.

Somehow we started talking about the Quints (some characters on Curious George) and we couldn't remember all of their names, so I looked it up, and then she pretty much just read the whole Wikipedia article of the list of Curious George characters.

Also watched some Curious George.

I found out about Amazon Underground (which deals in completely free apps with completely free in-app purchase so like heck yes sign me right up), and put a fun little cooking app on her tablet, so she played that some.

Read Lumberjanes some more, and there's something about 100 cookies and a Yeti or something? She started talking about how if she had 100 cookies she would trade them for 10 cookies because 100 is way too many. So then she was muttering something like, "...and 9 times 10 is 90, so I would give up 90 cookies!" Ummmm yes. Yes you would. o.O

Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Disney Fairies movies

She figured out how to turn on the Spanish audio and subtitles on Netflix.

She made and wrapped some birthday presents for me from some of the characters from the Fairies movies. I opened them right up because she used some of her blankets that she sleeps with to wrap them. She wrote an illustrated story called Beauty and the Bees about a male fairy ("sparrowman") who gets turned into a bee and then a fairy falls in love with him, etc, etc. Apparently the title is a throwaway joke from one of the movies, but she drew it for me!

And also a field journal by the disbelieving dad of the human girl in one of the movies. Illustrated rock journal! With bonus butterflies!







(I'm really digging her spelling process. She still puts "water writing" in the middle, but more and more often she's put the first letter of the word, and sometimes even the last letter too! Progress!)

We worked on a Kiwi Crate, which means we built rubber-band-powered paddle boats and decorated sails for them, and started on a mod-podged fish lantern! (to be completed tomorrow)

Monday, August 24, 2015 (+photo dump)

Today we:

-- went grocery shopping

-- went swimming. for like an hour? it was a long time. we had fun.

Also Norman strew the instructions to one of his card games, so the first thing I heard this morning was Lucy talking about how it's just like Pokemon but different in certain ways or something. I dunno. They looked at the cards for a while before we went shopping.



Also, yesterday Lucy made dinner! Okay, she said she wanted to make dinner, and she decided what to make and I... assisted. She learned how to use a knife safely to chop up fruit, and we also made grilled cheese. She burned her wrist on the pan during the making of the first sandwich, so I finished that up. But she made the fruit salad and sliced all the cheese.

Also I got Hungry Hungry Hippos from the thrift store so we've been playing that.

Also Disney Fairies movies, which has resulted in some cardboard and tape tiny house crafting (because usually she takes everything that happens in the fairy movies and translates it to lizards).

Also Pokemon watching.

And she's still about those Lumberjanes.


Oh my goodness I thought I was done but I wasn't because I found these photos from this last week.

She has this activity book where you're supposed to fill in the cartoons with what you think the characters are saying. She figured out that it would be great if these penguins were saying some dialog from one of the Lumberjanes comics, so she copied it in!



And then... she got a new Kiwi Crate, and she made a little booklet like the Kiwi Crate instructions, but for one of the projects in her Girl Scout binder! (a panda mask!)







And THEN, one day last week I woke up to Lucy telling me that she had made Norman and me some "peanut butter toast with basil, paprika, and garlic leeks." And like... WHAT. I was like, "Well, whatever that is, it will still be there in 15 minutes when I'm actually conscious." It turns out it was this:



"Garlic leeks" = green onions (she didn't know the name of them). She chopped them up with a steak knife. This is part of why we had knife lessons yesterday. Gracious. And mine had chocolate sprinkles, because my birthday is coming up. Yes I took a (tiny) bite. Because, as I'm always telling her, you won't know if you don't like something until you try it!

And also I took these today. Looking very grown up!

Thursday, June 4, 2015

Watched Lego Friends while playing with her Friends Legos. (The one where they invent something to prevent dolphin bycatch and then go on a yacht cruise is her favorite.)

Helped me tie dye? Okay, no, I didn't let her use the dyes, but a few weeks ago at Target she picked out which things she wanted dyed, and today she told me what design she wanted and which colors.

Played with her learning clock a little.

Played with her tape measure a bunch.

Decided that she needed to search for something she lost under the couch a long time ago, so this is a the getup she came up with for that mission:

(LOL like possibly we should clean more. In fact this prompted Norman to take the couch apart and vacuum everything.)

She worked on this craft set that I bought at the thrift store a while back. She recognized and could name the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower.

Watched the Scrambled States of America Scholastic DVD she got from the library (twice -- once while reading along with the book).

Played in the sprinkler.

We watched several YouTube videos, including watching the old Disney short cartoon In the Bag, which of course she loved.

Found the mailing address of the publishing company that makes the Disney Fairies graphic novels she's been reading, so she decided she wanted to write them a letter telling them that she likes the books. This turned into a whole ordeal, but before she threw a fit and gave up because it wasn't perfect, she did some writing. 

She has these pads of sticky notes that say "Lucy" on them, so she took several sheets and wrote "Inn" after the "Lucy" and drew little pictures of what it's going to look like at her hotel.

Tuesday, May 2, 2015

Watched Pokemon.

Came with me to Bible study. Colored with her gel pens the whole time.

We made some more SWAPS:

Perler beads:

And puzzle piece monsters that I neglected to take a photo of.

And she also made a puzzle (I bought a bunch of blank ones for various projects).

She spent a lot of time in the playroom with her tiny bits... I don't know what to call them. She has a jar of miniature Christmas ornaments, decorative buttons, etc, etc. Sometimes she sorts them or plays with them like dolls.

She got out her Girl Scout book and read two of the flower friends stories aloud to me while I made dinner, and then also asked me the discussion questions.

She dressed up like a "scientist" (rain coat, safety goggles, magnifying glass, paper, and pen) and went outside. She came back in saying she had "captured some ants successfully", and then later that she had gathered some grass seeds (which she has been very interested in for the last couple weeks).

Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Phineas and Ferb.

Mickey's House of Villains.

Bible study -- she played Fruit Ninja, hair salon, and Tetris (although she said it was too hard for her) on her tablet and worked on her KiwiCrate activity book.

She kinda worked on that all day -- learning bug facts and coloring and doing mazes and stuff.

Then she and Norman talked about kiwis and New Zealand and looked at maps.

Then she and I made the dragonfly shooters from the KiwiCrate.

[KiwiCrate is fantabulous. There's kind of a lot of value in one box and it's like its own little fun science curriculum. Use my link and get $10 off (because I get $10 too and I want more).]

She played outside in the sprinkler.

I showed her how to play pyramid solitaire, and then normal(?) solitaire (which she wasn't as interested in), and then War, which was too boring for her.

Watched a Christmas Winnie the Pooh movie. 

Played a game where she came around to each of the adults in the house and had us pick out parts for Lego minifigs and then we had to come up with a name and their "facts". I think she was planning to make a play with them like her theater teacher did with all the kids' made-up characters. But she said maybe it wouldn't work with only 4 characters, so Norman and I mentioned that there are plays with only two people (out of which came the name and basic plot of Waiting for Godot) and even one-person plays. She seemed skeptical.

Asked for a bath. Consented to a toyless bath. That's how much she needed a bath after playing in the sprinkler today. 

Sunday, May 24, 2015

Phineas and Ferb

She found a giant dead bug this morning, and Norman took it outside and made some comment about how the circle of life continues. Lucy wanted to know what this means, so we talked about nutrients and fertilizer and post-mortem decay and stuff. Not real in depth, but yeah.

During church she drew pictures of lizards doing the things we were doing. There was a lizard taking lizard communion getting ready to dip a bug in wine, a lizard sitting on a pew drawing pictures... It was very meta.

After church we played at the park, then had a picnic where she did a bunch of excited kite-flying.

Also someone was passing around little paper dove cutouts with the fruits of the Spirit and Bible verses on them. Lucy found a pile of them and wanted to look through and see what all of them were. She noticed that many of them are also part of the Girl Scout Law. I told her there's a patch she can earn for making a presentation about how the Girl Scout Law is similar to the things we believe God wants us to do, which of course she already knew about because she's read her entire Girl Scout handbook front to back. I'm gonna see about having her do that in the fall. The subject comes up with her pretty often, actually.

Norman and Lucy went to the children's museum. Golf ball runs, giant water table, pretend supermarket (which is super cool and everything really works), made a crown out of construction paper and pipe cleaners...

Friday, May 22, 2015

Watched Phineas and Ferb.

Went to the post office and grocery store with me. We had to have a talk about not just knowing that you're going to veer away from running into someone at the last minute, but letting the person know you're not going to run into them by moving before it's the last minute. Oy.

She watched Dotty play her Pokemon game.

She's been reading her Lego ideas book kind of a lot. I think she just pores over it in the playroom whenever I'm not looking.

We made some SWAPS! Well, ya know, I ended up making the majority of them, but still. She helped make two different kinds and also made herself a bracelet. And she helped sort the beads.

And she also had her Colorform-type stickers out again.

She and I wrapped presents for Dotty's birthday, and Lucy wrote her a card (with a pun!).

Played Pokemon Crystal.

Started building a Pokemon day care?

Thursday, May 21, 2015

Watched a Disney Fairies movie.

Played with her magnetic pompom set.

Played with her Colorform-type things, which led to a brief discussion about interracial families.

She somehow turned her Monopoly Crazy Cash game into a Pokemon game. She gave me a starter Dollar and it had a name and there were all these rules for my journey through the Money world.

Major Duplo situation involving dumping every single one of them on the floor. And, ya know, a whole bunch of building and storytelling after that.

At lunchtime, I asked if she wanted "berries" with her lunch, and she told me that strawberries aren't actually berries, because berries have their seeds on the inside. Apparently she learned this at the children's museum. Then she told me that, surprisingly, oranges are berries, and that she learned that from Fruit Ninja.

Watched some Phineas and Ferb.

We're working on telling time because I put up minute numbers:

Worked on making a lizard house out of a shoeboxes on the model of the fairy house in The Great Fairy Rescue. Then she gave up on the shoebox and made it with Duplos instead. She packed it all up and took it outside and set it up. She put one little green candy on a tiny plate and noted that maybe the ants would get it, but that the lizard would probably be happy to eat the ants, and then she shouted, "Hey!! I just made a food cycle! The ants eat the candy, and the lizards eat the ants!" [She meant "food chain", obviously.]

Played outside in the sprinkler.

Last Girl Scout meeting of the year. We were introduced to the concept of SWAPS, and she made some, though not as many as she would have liked, so we're planning to make a bunch to give away at the family reunion we're going to this summer. Pinterest has a ton of great ideas, of course! (Also she was quite taken with the word "whatchamacallit", which is apparently the funniest thing she's ever heard.)

Monday, May 18, 2015

DisneyCollector videos.

Grocery shopping with me.

Phineas and Ferb.

She and I baked the Shrinky Dink charms she got for her birthday and had already colored in.

We played Set. It's a bit beyond her, but she was starting to pick it up a little.

Watching that Disney vacation planning DVD again.

Played outside in the sprinkler.

Decided to read one of the Disney Fairies comic books we got from the library in bed.

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!

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.

Saturday, September 27, 2014

Skating lessons. She's definitely improving, and she seems to be more confident. She played her Phineas and Ferb game while they waited for me to be done, and also she watched some hockey practice.

Played outside.

Went to the mall with Dotty. They played at the play area. She brought her mall map with her (one of her favorite possessions at the moment), and was explaining it all to another kid there.

Watched some Phineas and Ferb.

She got some good scissor practice in cutting out the tiny pictures of checks from the specialized check advertisement. For house lizards, of course.

More Disney World DVD. And talking about it. And looking at the Disney World maps we have.

I read her I am Abraham Lincoln before bed.

Friday, September 5, 2014

She woke me up about to fill out the Girl Scout form for herself. I convinced her to wait and let me do most of it. Later this made her want to make her own form. She spelled "no" by herself for it. She said, "I saw it in my head!"

I gave her two little cork boats I'd made, and some toothpicks, and she made sails and put Lego people on them and floated them in her turtle pool in the backyard. Then she got into the turtle pool herself. Then she was playing with the hose sprayer. While it was raining.

There was some angst off and on during the day about her self-predicted ability to abide by the Girl Scout Law. We had a nice talk about how those are things we try to do anyway, and everyone messes up sometimes, and the important thing is to say sorry and try again. (I feel her, BTW. I put off saying the Sinner's Prayer to "officially" become a Christian for about 2 years past the point that my evangelical upbringing had me convinced that I needed to do it to be saved, because I just wasn't so sure that I really wanted to officially decide to always obey my parents and do the right thing. True story. I like having options.)

But then again, later she was trying to copy the ice breaker Bingo card we took home from the scout meeting last night. She made the grid and copied about 4 words before it was bedtime.

She also played Super Mario Galaxy with Norman. And she was fiddling with the Miis again earlier. This is practically a daily occurrence.

She spent a significant amount of time playing with her dolls and Lego people, including making them have a loud, long, and incredibly unproductive argument about nothing.

Before bed I read her Miniature Reptiles, and we learned the proper name for our house lizards! Green anoles, apparently. Then she was telling Norman about it (he was in the other room while we were reading), and he asked her if she meant green "gecko", and she very quickly got upset and lost confidence. So we had a nice chat about how if you're the person who read the book, then you're the person who knows, so you're the person who gets to explain it, and other people can be wrong, even if they're older than you.

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

This morning she brought up Girl Scouts. I had looked into this a little but hadn't said anything to her about it. So I think we're going to a meeting on Thursday to see what's up. I am so not a joiner, but I will do pretty much anything for Lucy. If she wants to be a joiner, then we'll be joiners. We'll see.

She was working on a multi-chapter story. This consisted of writing a bunch of squiggly lines on one corner of a giant piece of construction paper and drawing a picture of what was happening in the chapter. Then she'd come show it to me, then she'd run off and write/draw the next chapter. There's a giant friendly female giant with short legs, among other things. And a dead person. She's really into drawing dead people with little x's for eyes.

She kept trying to get me to join the adult September reading program at her Lucy Library.

She found a teeny little train ornament of hers that's missing a wheel, so she drew a plan diagram of how to fix it.

For a couple minutes she was intense curious about how many days are in a year, how many hours in a day, etc, etc. And some discussion of seasons and lengths of days.

Played Super Mario Galaxy.

Said this:

She played with her dolls/Duplos/beads for a while.

I got out a new toy that I've had stashed away for a while. It's a thick cork board, wooden shapes with holes in them, long thumbtacks, and a tiny hammer. (Like this.) It comes with a paper of ideas of pictures you can make with the shapes. It's fun! She did this first:

And decided halfway through that it was definitely a train conductor panel, since everything turns, I guess. Then I did a pattern; then she did one of the pictures from the paper (she called it a diagram -- thanks, Peg + Cat!), but she added her own stuff. Then she made Luigi. 

More Super Mario Galaxy, this time with Norman.

After dinner she decided she should put a picture of something on a popsicle stick so it would look like she has something flying around following her (like Rosalina does, I guess?). She finally settled on flying house lizard. She drew it, and I helped her cut it out, and she taped it on a popsicle stick. 

We practiced some ASL from our library book before bed. (We've already renewed that thing once... I should probably buy her a copy!)

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.)

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.