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.

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, September 1 - 3, 2015

Tuesday was pretty much spent watching one of the Pooh movies on Netflix. And drawing pictures for a scrapbook she was making (one of which was of her wearing a Norman mask and it was super surreal and awesome). But when I mentioned offhand that the story of them substituting Piglet for Baby Roo and hoping Kanga wouldn't notice was my favorite part of the books, she got out the book and started reading. And then she read and read, and she got to one of the poems and she cracked up, and she read some more, and I got out the other book, and she it. And then she drew some more pictures (of course).

Wednesday was almost exclusively taken up by Lucy making many episodes of a TV show about lizards. She got her little plastic lizards and had them do stuff in front of her tablet camera. They're actually impressively coherent -- there are three main characters, all with their own personality quirks, and each episode starts the same way: Ronaldo Lizard is sleeping in his bed, he wakes up with a start realizing his alarm hasn't gone off, grabs his bag and his travel mug, and goes off to a different job, where two lizards are waiting to show him how they do the job. There is also a special episode where they watch Star Wars and decide to make their own Star Wars movie (so meta). (Also it should be noted that the last time Lucy watched a Star Wars movie she was 2 and she does not remember this. But she found my vintage pop-up Star Wars books the other day and has been reading them.) She would shoot an episode, and then come show it to me. And then all morning Thursday, she's been rewatching them. Here is the episode where Ronaldo goes down to the docks.

Wednesday is also library day, and before she had a massive screaming, flailing frustration freak out that I handled very calmly and refused to be embarrassed about (which drained every last piece of my emotional energy and then I was cranky with everyone the rest of the day -- you win some, you lose some), she made some really cool digital art on the computer!  There's a program where you can take webcam photos and then edit them with a paint program. She started a series of photos of her playing Blue's Clues. It was going to be super cool! Here's the one she finished:



Also this drawing of one of the Disney Fairies cooking? (I really like the egg being cracked into the bowl!)

A large portion of Thursday afternoon was spent using both Star Wars pop-up books plus the inventions pop-up book as sets for some of her Duplo people to have adventures on.

Then she said she wanted something new from the Homeschooling Cabinet (TM), so I opened it up and she picked these dress up fashion plate type things where you switch out swatches of fabric to make new clothes for the figures (kind of like these). Apparently that was great fun.

Thursday also meant the first Girl Scout meeting of the year. Big group, ice breaker type things. She had to ask some people what they are most scared off, and one of the grown ups said "credit cards!" so on the drive home we had a great talk about how credit cards work and how Norman and I use them and why they might be scary to some people.

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

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Lots of writing today... and drawing.

She made a quiz sheet for me to answer and then wrote down what her stuffed animals thought too.



She saw a post on FB about the questions I ask her every so often (to see how her answers change) and wanted me to ask them again, but I wasn't going to, so I said maybe she should ask me questions instead, so she did, and she drew the answers. (She got frustrated when she was almost done and crossed it out. But then after she calmed down she copied it all again to finish it. Progress!)



She drew a picture that has something to do with that Mickey Mouse Christmas movie.



She saw this anagram in one of the Lumberjanes comments and was obviously smitten (we are not immune to finding potty humor hilarious).



She learned about polygons "tiling the grid" from a Tumblr post I saw and showed to Norman. So then she tried to do it with hearts and circles.



She read a bunch more from the Jesus Storybook Bible.

She got out her Pop-Up House of Inventions to read, and then decided that it would of course make a great dollhouse with her Duplo people.

We went to the library and she did some art paint program on the children's computer.

She had her last swim lesson. I signed us up for membership at the place with the indoor pool, so we'll go swimming once a week for the foreseeable future.

Oh yeah and she took some photos and filmed an intro for some new show about lizards that she's planning to make.

Wednesday - Sunday, July 29 - August 2, 2015

On Wednesday, more swim lessons. (This will go on for 4 weeks.) She asked the guys who are teaching the class where they are from ("Europe" LOL I'm curious about a more specific answer, personally!), and dove for some rings (with help).

But before that, we went to the final library program of the summer, which was a magic show put on by a 16-year-old magician. He was great! Great sense of humor and good with the kids. Lucy got picked to help him with one of his tricks! It was long and complicated, and she was very patient and spoke up clearly. It ended with her getting a balloon dog. She was very impressed.

On Thursday she made this great joke:

[That's a rock and some scissors taped to some paper]

On Saturday we went to the local Pride parade:

And then had beignets at the adjacent farmers market:

(Which was a big deal to her since she's been watching Princess and the Frog so often lately.)

Oh and we also saw some break dancers! Oh and Lucy spotted a young person wearing a unicorn headband thing and she was entranced. She "called" her stuffed unicorn on the "phone" to tell her about it, then went up to the girl and told her that she liked it.

Today she was watching a Curious George episode about camping, so she brought her tent out of her bedroom, and took her pillow case off her pillow (for a sleeping bag), and set up this circle of rocks, and found something to be a marshmallow on a stick:

She and Norman also watched The Cat Returns today. Lucy picked it out at the library because she knows Norman likes Miyazaki movies.

Oh she's been so busy with so many schemes... I can't keep track. Today she was rather taken with a particular drag queen that she saw on the roller derby program and at the Pride parade. She got out all the fancy jewelry she could find and had me put blue eyeshadow on her and made a flyer where she changed the drag queen's name to put "Lu" in the middle of it.

She had me put some nuts in an ice cube tray with water and freeze them so she could play hockey with squirrels. (???)

Did I already say that she's obsessed with calling out when the time on the clock is a palindrome? She still is.

She's been big on reading and watching the same thing at the same time. Like, she checked the DVD of Cinderella out of the library so she could watch it while reading her cinestory graphic novel of it that she has. And she checked out both a graphic novel version and a DVD version of a Disney Fairies movie.

Also every now and then she'll just clean the bathroom. Not well, of course. Today it was the mirror.

And I don't remember if I mentioned this a couple weeks ago, but at one of the library programs the presenter did Miss Mary Mack with a volunteer, and this was Lucy's attempt at writing it down. I'm so impressed! So much important spelling and transcribing groundwork is here:

Tuesday and Wednesday, July 21 & 22, 2015

I got out of the shower to find this had happened:

I was so seriously impressed, because it must have taken her forever to lay all those pennies out (182 of them, as it turned out), and she stuck with it!

She wanted to know how many there were, but didn't think she could count all of them (overwhelming, of course!), so I suggested that she divide them into groups of ten pennies each, and then count how many groups of ten there were. She needed some help with this, so I gathered some toothpicks, and we used those to divide them up.

Then we counted the groups, and she used the calculator on her tablet to find out how many there were (18 x 10 + 2). Then we worked on the other coins too. (At which point, she was counting her dimes, and it turns out she can count be tens to 100! I didn't know about this.)

(And then of course she threw a fit when she had to pick all the pennies up, but let's focus on the positives, eh?)

Also she volunteered that she can spell "sí" (Spanish for yes), and did so. So I asked if she could spell the other kinds ("see" and "sea") if she closed her eyes and looked at the words in her head, and she could! This is a big deal -- she's known the first letter of most words for a long time, but spelling beyond that has not come very naturally to her so far.

We went to a one-man puppet show at the library. He played his banjo and sang and told the story with the puppets. Then at the end her showed us how all the puppets work and told us he made them all himself. Lucy loved it -- she was cracking up and interacting with the show the whole time.

She also played in the sprinkler (this always involves filling with water the giant hole that she periodically digs a little deeper).

Let's see... watching Princess and the Frog, the Christmas episode of Kid History, Curious George, some random Mickey Mouse Christmas movie...

Oh, this morning she asked to look through the tub of grown up costumes, which I hauled out of the garage for her to dig through. That resulted in some great stories about things that happened before she was born and/or aware.

And always Legos. Always.

June and July -ish, 2015

I'm so bad at making myself keep up with this. But, as my friend is fond of saying, never stop starting!

So since the last time I updated, we...

--went on a nine-day road trip to Oklahoma and back. We went to a Lego Discovery Center and a children's museum, we met extended family (and she passed out her SWAPS), we visited her grandparents' new house out in the country, we went to several malls, she got to play in a cool little indoor water park thingy. Oh and she watched a bunch of Disney Channel in the hotel rooms, which resulted in about a week solid of watching the TV show Jessie on Netflix when we got back. And during this last week she watched Princess and the Frog about 10 times after catching part of it on TV while we were gone. Oh and she spent a lot of time in the car on a US geography puzzle and fact book.

--went to the local aquarium (which we hadn't visited before). They have a cool tank where you reach in and touch rays and little sharks, which was neat.

--more visits to the local children's museum. Gosh darn it we are going to wring every dollar's worth out of the year-long membership we bought, and also it's air conditioned and it's ridiculously gross and horrible outside here in the summer.

--attended a bunch of library programs. The Friends of the Library here fund great special programs here every summer. I know I documented a bunch last summer, and they're just as wonderful this year! We saw a two-person Robin Hood play, a presentation with live birds of prey, a local TV meteorologist came and answered questions, the lady from Gullah Gullah Island came and told us story and sang songs with us, and a guy from the city brought reptiles and told us all about them!

I don't know if I mentioned this before, but we've started letting her read with a flashlight in the little tent she has in her bedroom before she goes to sleep. She's never sleepy at the time the grownups would really like to have some time to themselves, so why not? She's been big on her Lego building books, her Pokemon book, the book about plants, one about like criminal forensics (fingerprinting and stuff)... still mostly non-fiction.

And speaking of fingerprinting, I found a cheap (obviously) fingerprinting kit at the dollar store so we did that one afternoon. It wasn't spectacular, but she seemed to get a kick out of it! She was looking for "loops" and "whorls" and stuff.

And then just general every day, lots of Legos, lots of TV, lots of playing in the sprinkler, a good amount of drawing. She's also becoming more independent in the kitchen, pouring herself juice (sometimes without spilling it), finding her own snacks, making her own toast... stuff like that. It's kinda nice!

Here are photos from the aquarium, and here are photos from the road trip.

And here is the woman from the birds of prey center with an owl:

And here is the time all of Lucy's stuffed animals were dressed up as detectives (purple unicorn = handcuffs, peace sign bear = badge, brown teddy bear = shades, minnie mouse = flashlight, moose under the blanket = deerstalker hat [which, yes, is actually a swimming bonnet]):

And here are some kids touching a tiny alligator:

And here is Lucy with the reptile stuff in her lizard shirt:

And here is the plant cycle she drew unbidden:

Oh and also yesterday she invented the lightning rod. Norman mentioned to her that lightning usually tends to strike metal things and tall things, so she was like, "So people should build tall metal things so those get hit instead of other things!"

Wednesday, June 3, 2015

Watched Pokemon

Colored with gel pens. Like a lot. Very studiously.

Asked about how "exactly" locks work, so we watched some YouTube videos that explain it.

Went to the library. Signed up for Summer Reading. Kind of sat right down with a new Disney Fairies comic before I interrupted to ask about another book.

Legos.

Watched Phineas and Ferb.

Wednesday, May 13, 2015

She keeps making up her own Pokemon, complete with powers and what they evolve into. "Helperd", "Antidoi" (can heal other Pokemon), and "Laurabee" (which is like a bee, can't fly when wet, and the females evolve into Lauraqueen and the males evolve into Lauraking). I can't keep track of which ones are real and which ones she made up!

She put together a kit to help warriors when they're hurt or their swords break. It has a flashlight, scissors, several rolls of tape, her magicband...

She watched a bunch of Pokemon.

She played with her Monopoly Crazy Cash game. (She got this as a birthday present from a friend and has messed around with the pieces pretty much every day since then. Possibly because all the other board games are put away out of her reach so she can't lose the pieces...)

She and I had a very illuminating conversation at the library

me: [trying to think of books she might like to check out] You know there's some Fancy Nancy books where she's a grown up kid and she's a detective?

Lucy: Yeah, I know! I have one!

me: [remembering that I bought one at last year's library book sale] Oh, yeah, right.  

Lucy: I'm not sure detecting stuff is for kids.

me: ??? Well, they write the books about kids detecting for kids to read...

Lucy: Yeah, I read it. It was about a lost marble.

me: Really?? Did she find it?

Lucy: Yeah, she found the marble.

me: Oh! I'm just surprised -- I didn't know you read it because I didn't ever see you reading it.

Lucy: Yeah, I read it really fast. I read really fast, so it was kinda...

me: Well, they have more -- do you want another one?

Lucy: Yeah, sure. Get me the longest one.

me: [goes over and gets all three that they have on the shelf]

Lucy: Yeah, I already read this one -- this is the one about the marble. [The first one: "Nancy Clancy: Super Sleuth"]

me: Oh, okay. Do you want the other two?

Lucy: Sure.

Okay, I typed this whole thing out because I really, really had NO idea that she had read the book. Or that she had ever sat down by herself and read a chapter book. I had been working on the assumption that although her reading ability is up to the challenge of almost any book, her attention span and perhaps her physical mechanisms involved (eyes, etc) where not up to it. But no -- apparently it turns out that all the books she has are just too short?? She goes through them too fast so they're boring?? I also talked her into getting the second Boxcar Children book (since she loves the first one, and the rest are mysteries). We'll see if she reads them, I guess. At the same time, she's always turning down my offers to read Narnia or Harry Potter or Mysterious Benedict Society, etc, etc, to her at bedtime. Sometimes I think she just needs to make her own way so badly that she'll turn down anything as long as I suggested it.

Oh, and she also used the library DVD alphabetizing to find the movies she was looking for. (She pretty much has first letters down pat. The rest of the spelling, not so much.)

Also I don't think I've mentioned here yet that she now has her own library card, and she knows how to check to see if things are due and how to put things on hold with her library account on her tablet.

She built this hotel room furniture. I love it! The bed is so fancy, and all the luggage is on top of the A/C window seat combo.

Also we gave her a flashlight and she's been reading her Pokemon handbook in her bed every night before she goes to sleep. 

Nov 5-9, 2014

Post-vacation time has brought a predictably cranky 5 year old, but also a 5 year old who is remarkably content to get back to her own stuff, her own backyard, and autonomy over her own time.

Lots of playing outside, including "cooking", possibly creating a restaurant or drive-thru place in her tiny playhouse, and dressing up in her swim suit and trying to find a high place to put her lawn chair so she can be a lifeguard.

Lots of watching Phineas and Ferb. And of course responding to Phineas and Ferb by incorporating their schemes into her schemes.

Bike race map:

Copying the names of the Phineas and Ferb songs from the liner notes of her CD (this may have happened before the vacation...):

(And this is on the back:)

Trying to pause an episode at just the right place so that she can copy some words from the closed captioning. She's been quite ingenious lately with different ways to figure out how to spell/write things. Lots of copying from other place where she knows it's already written down.

Girl scout manual:

"Mom, what's an amp hi theater?"

These are bidding paddles for an auction? I've been told?

We put together both the Lego sets she got in Florida. In both cases, she actually got a lot of it done by just following the instructions before she got frustrated and yelled for me to help her.

We went to the library and she found even more tricks to that story typing game (and had the computer pronounce more of her nonsense typing).

She went to her Girl Scout meeting, and they talked about lions, and ways we can take care of pets. She actually gave a really accurate and pithy summary of an anecdote from The Boxcar Children that was on topic!

First staking lesson at her new level. I think they did ice bowling or something.

In Sunday school they talked about this parable and made little paper suitcases and filled them with pictures of (according to her) "4 tips for making God happy." And then after church she played with one of her friends at the park. I heard the following choice snippets: "We can both be Elsa! Two Elsas!" and "We're both mermaids. All that is the water." and "You pretend to be a witch and you're trying to get me!" Good times...

Been reading some Phineas and Ferb books from the library before bed. Which I don't mind because I like doing the voices.

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!

Wednesday and Thursday, September 10 & 11, 2014

Ehhhh it's Thursday. Oops.

Well, today she played outside a lot. Lots of fake food cooking and mixing. Crazy swinging. House lizard traps.

She spent a long time playing with her action figures. I heard a song she made up, some of the lyrics of which were, "Give thanks to Elsa!"

She played a geography game on her tablet.

She played Super Mario Galaxy, both by herself and with Norman. Both today and yesterday she spent kind of really long periods just reading the storybook that's contained within the game. And also the user manual.

I read her a book about Australia before bed. She was very interested in the info on the Great Barrier Reef, I think because they mention it in the game she was playing on the tablet.


Yesterday we went to the library. She played that story typing game again, except this time she figured out how to get the computer to pronounce the things she typed. Mostly nonsense, and also some very long numbers. She was delighted!  And then she was doing a coloring page, but instead she turned it over and copied the words "Weekly Events" from the dry erase board that they have up in the children's section.

She has been VERY into puns lately. On Sunday some kid said something about how flies bug you, and she's been laughing about that all week.  When she was copying the thing at the library, she pointed out that a "k" looks like a see-saw sideways, "but an underwater one. Sea-saw. Get it?" Ugh.

She's been typing messages on the Wii again. All the time. She spends a lot of time typing numbers in order. Like, up to 19. And sometimes the alphabet too. Or sometimes she wants me to spell long sentences for her.

After dinner last night we spent some time typing things into Google translate and then having the computer read them. Sometimes in different languages so it would have an accent. Good times.

We did a little bit of a sign language book before bed yesterday.

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.

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.)

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.

Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Well the first thing we were supposed to do today was go to a friend's house to have a Wii party, but they were sick, so we couldn't go. This was emotionally devastating to Lucy, so I offered to play Mario Kart with her, which I don't normally do because I don't really like it. Then she also raced by herself.

She spilled her cereal on the floor, so she got to practice using her little brush and dustpan.

She spent some time in the backyard. Not sure doing what, besides getting muddy.

We went to the library, and today was a special summer reading, eat ice cream, and watch Frozen party. Then at the end there was a lady giving out balloon sculptures (I mean, none of them were animals, so...), including Elsas. It was all super cool.

She watched Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood (one about sharing).

She decided she wanted to (finally) treat our USA magnets like a puzzle, so I put it together while she consulted an atlas and her placemat map. We figured out which ones were missing. I told her I had to learn all the capitals in school, so she asked me a bunch of them (which I mostly knew). She wanted to know what else I had to learn about them, so I sang her the song, which is why I know all the states in alphabetical order. (Although now that I'm sitting here thinking about it, I don't think she knows what "alphabetical" means, and she didn't ask.)

Then she wanted to borrow my calculator, and she wants one of her own. She asked Norman something about dividing? so he showed her 10 divided by 5 with some of her beads.

I read her a Doc McStuffins book before bed. (The problem with the toy is that she needed to be in the sunlight so her solar panel could charge.)

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Today we went to the library and saw a two-person play about King Arthur. Pretty impressive British accents on the actors, actually. When they talked about the round table, Lucy pointed out to me that, hey, they have one of those on Peg + Cat!! And during the Q&A after the play, some other kid was like, "Hey, those people were on Magic School Bus!" So Lucy and I got to talk about how the story is a legend, and lots of people have been telling it and talking about the characters for hundreds and hundreds of years, for so long that no one is sure if it's true or made up. And that people study to try to find out if it's true, but no one's really sure.

She had been playing a bunch of Mario Kart, but she's pretty much laid off the TV and video games for the last couple days. It goes in cycles like that.

Lots of playing with Duplos, and her beads. They kind of get mixed up together. The beads are food a lot. Actually so are the Duplos. She's been making some very abstract menu items out of plain Duplo blocks.

Before the library this morning, Norman took her to the comic book store, because it's Batman Day. She got a Batman mask and he bought her a Mickey Mouse comic or some such (which she was reading at dinner, because she wanted more summer reading points). Then when they got home, she decided she needed to dress up like Word Girl. Norman made her a star emblem for her shirt. Word Girl's sidekick is a monkey, and when he's incognito as just a regular pet monkey (?) he wears a diaper, so that's why she's got a monkey puppet in a diaper.

She went to the library this way. I'm so proud.

She's done some writing lately. She insists we spell for her.

This afternoon she spent some time with a kid's road atlas workbook thingy.

We've spent some more time with that sign language book. Making the "Y" for her name is giving her some trouble, but she managed to do it tonight.

Tomorrow is Learn Nothing Day, so I'll be sure to report back on our utter failure! :-)