Tuesday, December 15, 2015

Today Lucy went swimming, wrote two songs and made up a dance to go with one of them, made a comic book about being helpers, made 4 Lizards Like the Humans videos and 2 craft tutorial videos, and figured out $400 x 3 in her head. She also used the word "particles" in a sentence and made a pun about the word "retire".

Monday, August 31, 2015 (plus weekend)

Well, today we went grocery shopping and swimming. I didn't get in the pool today, so she made friends with the lifeguard, since she was pretty much the only person there.

Today she'd been quiet for a while, and when I found her, she was sitting in her rocking chair, reading (just reading) a time/money/fractions math workbook.

On Friday in the car, we were talking about carrier pigeons (because we had been laughing at a comic strip about how birds can't read), and she wanted to know how they know where to take their messages, because she knew about carrier pigeons from Curious George. I said that I didn't know, and maybe each bird only flew back and forth between two places. (Is that right? I never did look it up.) After several minutes of silence, she said, "Maybe each place you want to send a letter to could have a different colored pole outside, and you could put the color of the place you want to send it to on the envelope and you could teach the pigeons the color code!" I was very impressed.

She watched Tinkerbell and the Lost Treasure, which I think must have something to do with a scepter? because she kept talking about making and delivering different kinds of scepters and then she drew the dress she was going to wear to do this, and it has symbols for every season on its train.



And also whatever this is... instructions for how to build a scepter?



This morning she planned a hike in the backyard because she wanted to show me what she thought was poison ivy (it wasn't), but then she planned out a whole thing with a map (which I suspect is modeled on something from Lumberjanes) and she packed snacks in her backpack and got a hat and everything.



And on Saturday we went and saw a replica Spanish galleon that was docked in town. We could go all over and see several decks below and they had a little thing where you could practice tying different kinds of knots (Lucy was already familiar with a few of them because of Lumberjanes) and we learned that the captain is a woman (which made Lucy very excited) and it was all around pretty cool.

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 18, 2015

Well, this morning she was still watching those Mickey Mouse Christmas movies, so she dressed up like Santa.

(Beard, pillow-belly, hat, sleigh, reindeer, and bag of toys included [those are pipe cleaners attached to Moose, her stuffed reindeer])

She and I had reason to be hanging around outside a place with a variety of interesting plants waiting for something, so she decided that we should gather materials for clothing and fire wood in case we had to wait their a very long time. (I sewed some leaves together!)

She randomly sat and read from the Jesus Storybook Bible for like half an hour, because she wanted to look something up that she'd seen in this Easter puzzle pad that she has and has been working on, but she ended up just reading a whole bunch instead.

She set up a system for us to send notes back and forth to each other from my craft room to the playroom. She's been writing her letters in code.

She hung around in my craft room while I was working, always eager to help me with stuff when she can.

She went with Norman to a board game shop.

She said that she wants to have two boys and two girls when she has kids, so Norman gave her a coin and had her flip it four times several times and keep track of heads and tails (Local Statistician Can't Stop, Won't Stop).

Spent awhile reading some Lumberjanes comics.

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.

Friday, June 5, 2015

Watched Pokemon

Played several games on the PBSkids website -- mostly Peg+Cat math games, mostly about fractions.

Watched a bunch of WordGirl.

Played Pokemon Crystal on Norman's computer. Decided to stop playing before she had a meltdown (progress!).

Legos/Duplos.

But like so much WordGirl. It was a WordGirl kinda day, apparently.

Oh, and then she was talking about a character from one of her Disney Fairies comic books that sounded like she was saying "Chole" so I asked her to spell it, so she went and got the book and showed me that it was actually "Chloe". So I asked if she wanted to know how it's pronounced, and she did. And oh boy do I remember pronouncing names wrong for the longest time as a young precocious reader myself.

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.

Friday, May 29, 2015

Started my day by explaining how, exactly, to alphabetize.

Fairy dress up game.

I gave her some new wooden food that you can cut up with a book about food fractions (which she is ignoring in favor of just cutting the food).

Watched Pokemon.

Norman asked her a little kid question meme while I was gone getting my hair dyed, and she gave lots of fun answers, but the last one is the best:

How old was your dad when you were born? 

[She went over to her 100 wall chart] "Let's see here. I was born six years ago, and you are the age 31 now, so if my answer would be correct, [counts six spaces back from 31] you were... 26 years old when I was born."

So like... whoa. And once we told her that you'd count like it's a board game, she got the right answer (for Norman's age when she was born -- 25).

Dressed up like a "warrior" (science goggles, play wooden cutting board, giant tongs).

Watched Norman play the Brave Wii game.

Went on a random Blue's Clues watching spree. And possibly learned the names of all the planets as a result.

Thursday, May 28, 2015

When I woke up this morning, she was sitting in my room reading two different books at the same time (Disney Fairies comic and a new Lego ideas book from the library).

Watched Phineas and Ferb

Dumped out all the Duplos and spent quite a while playing with them.

At the end of one of the Disney Fairy comic books, there's about 3 pages of some other comic about teen girls or something, and Lucy showed it to me by saying, "Look, there's an ad for another book in here. I think they only give you a few pages so that you'll buy it because you want to know the rest of what happens!" ::sniff:: I'm so proud of her media savviness!

She built this, which she called a "lizard temple with summoning crystal":

She requested a dress-up app for her tablet, and I spent what seemed like forever looking for a suitable one. Finally found these and downloaded this one. The others will probably follow.

She saw this on my Facebook feed, so we talked about why it's funny:

Watched Pokemon.

Played outside.

Made some more surprise eggs? 

Also she's just been "packing" on and off all week for this road trip we're taking in a while. Like, every time I look at the pile of stuff she wants to take, it's bigger.

She built The Price is Right out of Duplos. 

She was telling me what everything was, and she said, "And the host is showing off a beautiful rose! He can even balance it on his head without getting hurt -- no thorns on him! ...Actually what happened is they picked it very carefully and then cut off all the thorns."  So like, once again, I'm so proud. She can talk something up like she's on QVC and then explain how the whole thing is a sham in the same breath.

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. 

Saturday, May 23, 2015

Phineas and Ferb. Just a lot of Phineas and Ferb.

First (as far as I know) grammatical magnetic poetry sentence: "Leave the other children to the sky." Okay then.

Went with Norman to eat ice cream and wander through Target looking at whatever she wanted. Apparently it was a very meandering trip.

We went to dinner for Dotty's birthday. She noticed a sign that said milkshakes were "Five Zero Zero", so I wrote this for her:

And we also drew crazy aliens on the kids' menu to pass the time.

And she was reading her Pokemon book and her Lego book again. Those are pretty much givens these days.

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.)

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

Woke up and immediately started reading her Disney Fairies comic book.

Came with me to Bible study -- watched Frozen (kinda) and used her tablet to play a hair salon game and mess around with the calculator.

Watched Pokemon.

She and I played a new board game I found online last night. Kind of simple, but you get to build your minifig before you start. :-)

Then consequently (long story) we talked about dimensions (one-dimension, two-dimension, three-dimension -- lines, squares, cubes).

She built a Pokemon battle ground (whatever they're called) for the grass types:

Watched a bit of Tangled.

Played outside in the sprinkler. Got brave enough to try to stop the flow of water with her hands, her butt, and a shovel. Decided that she and the sprinkler were going to be BFFs and gave it half of a leaf as a friendship charm.

Built some more cool Lego stuff.

Watched a Disney Fairies movie.

Took some plastic Easter eggs and a bunch of her various small toys and made "toy surprises" like the lady opens on DisneyCollector. Then she used her kids camera to film herself opening them in the style of DisneyCollector (and with amazingly similar syntax and vocal cadence...). 

And then she played outside some more.

And then she took her Pokemon book to bed with her. 

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.

Friday, May 15, 2015

Last theater class -- they weren't preparing for a show, so they just played the movement, self-control, and direction-following games they've been playing. Lucy got a certificate which she is very proud of, and struggled not to cry because she will miss it. They kept saying there will be another class "next fall", and all this time she thought they meant the fall of 2016, so she was very glad to learn about calendar years vs. school years in the car on the way home. :-)

Oh and she played basketball before theater class because that's what they do because it's held in a gym.

She's been working on a Lego hotel, so at the moment she's working on the water slide for the pool.

Amazon shipment day! We got a new container for her Legos, a set of 64 (SIXTY-FOUR) different colors of markers (which I want to keep for myself but I'm resisting), and a bluetooth keyboard for her tablet. I need to find a good typing game for her... Oh, and the box it all came in is huge and if I get my way it will be turned into a TARDIS, but at the moment she's just using it as an awesome fort.

The keyboard set her off on playing several of her tablet apps, and she eventually wound up on the PBS kids website, playing Peg + Cat and Dinosaur Train games.

Watched Kiki's Delivery Service.

Then decided that we need to start our own delivery service.

I installed a (pirate themed!) learn-to-count-money app on her tablet, and she immediately took it and started playing it.

Drew a picture of an "alicorn" because we looked it up because one of the girls in one of the plays last night was playing one.

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.

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.

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!)

Monday, September 1, 2014

Well, I didn't blog all weekend. But that's okay, because the entirety of the last three days can pretty much be summed up with the words "HOUSE LIZARDS". How can we catch house lizards? Everyone must contribute ideas. We grownups are running out of ideas that make sense, but we must keep coming up with more. There are nets, there are baskets, there is an actual Duplo maze, with a trail of leaves, leading to a Duplo building, the opening of which will be blocked up once the lizards are inside. We discuss how to get the lizards to not be scared of us, and how to make them feel at home once they're in our house. There are a lot of bug-flavored and -scented things, and a lot of green things. At one point she gathered up her greenest action figures and placed them around the kitchen counters. Maybe we should all wear green shirts. Maybe we should put dead bugs in our shoes so our feet will smell like bugs. Maybe she should put some pictures of grass up in her room. All she wants to do is talk about lizards. Possibly a visit to a pet store is in order in the near future.

Other than that, today anyway... We went to the grocery stores. I explained the difference between strength and leverage using the example of kneading dough on a low counter vs a high counter. She seemed to understand?

She played Mario Kart. She made new Miis. She spelled the word "guy" on her own without any help. That was cool.

She played some Peg + Cat games on the tablet.

She actually helped me clean her playroom. This may have been due to the fact that I told her she couldn't be in it while I was cleaning it unless she was helping. She finally gave in and completed one task admirably.

She watched Norman play Super Mario Galaxy while checking stuff in the manual. (Quite a regular occurrence around here.)