Monday, August 17, 2015

Today was the first day of school for the local public school kids. So Lucy is officially, technically in 1st grade. We celebrated this fact by... doing what we normally do.

-- Grocery shopping

-- Taking apart our fan that broke the other day and figuring out how it worked (all three of us had fun with this!)

-- Going to swim class

-- Reading -- in Lucy's case the first Nancy Clancy book

-- Coming up with lizard schemes (including trying to reuse some fan parts to make it so they can have electricity, and coming up with tiny Christmas decorations for them)

-- Watching Mickey Mouse cartoons

-- Playing with Legos and action figures

-- Writing important messages in code...? (The code lately has been abbreviating each word with the first letter. Super cool, actually.)

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!"

Sunday, June 7, 2015

Watched Curious George.

Watched Curious George while reading an entire book about plants? (She said she read the whole thing and this is entirely possible and she kept throwing random plant facts at me including something about ant/tree symbiosis?) She does that sometimes -- like she needs the noise to help her concentrate on the book or something. I understand.

Played outside.

Watched Blue's Clues movie. Was playing on her little piano keyboard along with them (there's a whole long sequence where G-Clef-Ray-Charles explains music).

Played outside.

Spent like 2 hours playing Legos and there was lots of talk of weapons and battles and emergency evacuations.

Children's museum. Cleaned up after other people in the supermarket section, then drew a picture about that. Played in the water table room. Found some pretend horses and fed them fake apples?

Watched Phineas and Ferb.

Drew a blueprint? For something. But like, she used a blue colored pencil.

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.

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.

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).

Monday, June 1, 2015

Watched Pokemon.

Decided that today was our wall calendar's birthday (after she switched the month over because she was the first person to think of it). She made it a "cake" (play pizza) with a "candle" (palm cross that she's been hoarding in her playroom), brought out balloons left over from her own birthday party, we sang Happy Birthday to it, she gave it a present and a card.... It made no sense, but it was delightful.

Decided that she would start her own church. She gathered a sword she made out of cardboard yesterday at the children's museum (it looks like a cross), our prayer book, the tiny mortar I let her use to mash up "herbs" sometimes (for the chalice), and a scented candle. She said that she is going to the priest, so she got a (red) blanket off her bed for her robes. She tried to get Norman and me to volunteer to be acolytes. She said that she still needed some more robes for all the different colors of the church seasons. And I mentioned that she might also want some training. LOL So interesting to see what she thinks of as things that are necessary for church -- they're quite different from what I would have gathered at her age.

We went grocery shopping. She found the sign (again) at one of the stores that explains how to use a fire extinguisher and read it, but got a little mixed up because the first letter of each word was much bigger than the others (so that it makes an acrostic). So she thought the last one said "weep side to side" and we got a big laugh out of the thought of someone crying back and forth during a fire!

We made the Jiffy Pop that I bought a few weeks ago after they made Jiffy Pop SWAPS at Girl Scouts.

Later she was talking about the calendar's birthday some more, and she said that she was going to make it something with mushrooms because mushrooms smell like months to it. So I joked that the calendar has synesthesia, so then I had to explain what synesthesia is.

Had a "Pokemon battle" with Norman (this is where they have a fight with stuffed animals while calling out Pokemon moves).

Then right before bed Norman had occasion to explain to her what a surrogate mother is.

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...

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.)

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.

Disney World (Oct 30 - Nov 4, 2014)

Well, we went to Disney World! It's a short day of driving from our house, so it was great to finally get down there. This will be a Lucy-centric accounting of what went on.

[pit stop]

We met up with my mom, dad, and brother, so she got to spend some time with extended family.

[playing the dots and squares game with her uncle]

Grandma and Grandpa have been living/working in Trinidad recently, so they brought her a Trinidadian flag, a map, some currency, and a parrot feather!

She found a fountain/splash pad thing our first night there, and was way more interested in actually getting wet than any of the other kids there:

We had the opportunity to take several ferry rides and many bus rides. On one of the bus rides, it was standing room only, and we were standing in front of a boy her age and his mom. Lucy struck up a very pleasant conversation with him about their clothes and school and cousins and all sorts of things.

On the drives down and back, she worked on a road trip workbook I made for her (mazes, design your own license plates and road signs, finish the robot drawing, etc.), played some tablet apps (Word Girl design your own superheroes, Fruit Ninja, etc.), and somehow generally kept herself occupied and clear of any whining. It was great!

Our hotel's pool had a big slide, and after some encouragement from Norman (and some random ladies in the pool), and a polite request that the lifeguard let Norman and Lucy go down it together the first time, she was going down it by herself!

[That blur in the middle of the slide is the two of them.]

Speaking of our little daredevil, we took her on Splash Mountain (a glorified log ride), and she loved it. I mean, I'm pretty sure I didn't like it as much as she did. She said it was "stunning scary! But the good kind!" She also loved us spinning the tea cup ride as fast as it could go. Plus two different carousels and It's a Small World and the Dumbo ride. Pirates of the Caribbean, not so much, because we forgot her headphones. Loud noises -- no; steep fast drops -- yes. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

We rode Spaceship Earth and learned about history. We rode The Seas with Nemo and visited the aquarium and learned about fish and manatees and stuff.

She played Agent P's World Showcase Adventure and learned about Mexico:

She read the clues and multiple choice options herself, and it turns out her phonics must be okay, because she can also read "Adios Amigos".

We met Merida and she shot a bow and arrow. We met Tinkerbell (while Lucy was dressed as Tinkerbell), and Tinkerbell asked what kind of inventions *she'd* been working on, and I mentioned her lizard trap ideas, and Tinkerbell suggested maybe Lucy could help her with her ladybug spotter invention and they pinky promised and it was *adorable*. She met Sofia (big head -- can't talk) and insisted on showing her that Sofia was on her autograph notebook. (We met quite a few characters. Lucy did a great job, even if she was a little overwhelmed and didn't always know what to say or how to react.)

We went to the Lego store and she built her own minifigs (an astronaut who got beat up in space, a lady who is moving, and an economist), and spent her souvenir money on two Lego sets, one of which we put together the day after we got home (and she helped quite a bit with that -- she put together the little oven/stove by following the instructions before she even asked for my help).

We visited an Irish pub and they had some dancers who invited the kids to dance with them, and she definitely did!

[She's the one on the right in the purple dress]

Not that this is out of the ordinary, but she was very well-spoken and polite to all the servers at the sit-down restaurants we went to. She knew what she wanted, and she said it!

Oh, and she found a word in a word search on one of the kids menus! I don't think she's ever done that by herself before.

We played air hockey in the arcade!

And there was a candy shop where you fill out a form to pick which thing you want, covered in which chocolate and which topping, and she wrote her name on it (with the new creative spelling she's been trying out) and put an 'x' next to the things she wanted.

We saw a couple stage shows -- a Frozen one with live actors, and a Disney Junior one with puppets. She loved both of them (of course).

Hollywood Studios has this cool playground that looks like you're in Honey I Shrunk the Kids -- she really enjoyed that, I think. Especially with all the talk about lizards lately.

[see, it's a slide, but it's a roll of film. eh? eh??]

On our last day, she found a prop/photo op car, climbed in, and made Norman sit in it with her while she rattled off a long spiel that seemed to be a combination of the recorded announcements from the buses and the ferries. Very professional, apparently.

We saw several different types of lizards and birds around the property. The ferry driver said they had otters, but we never saw any!

She brought Magic School Bus books with her, so I read her at least one of those while we were gone. Volcanos, I think?

She drew this calculator on the last day while we packed up:

["In 'off', does the 'ff' come at the beginning or the end?"]

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.

Thursday, September 25, 2014

We recently found the Disney vacation planning DVD (which Mommy may or may not have placed on top of a tall bookshelf and then forgotten about), so she watched that this morning.

Also some Phineas and Ferb.

Also watched Norman play Mario Galaxy.

And then they figured out that if you lay the Wii-mote down on the couch and then bounce on the couch cushion, Mario will move. There was some hypothesizing and experimentation with this, apparently.

She got out an old rubber stamp I had given her and asked if she could use her stamp pads (which I had put up high after she used them on the walls quite a while ago). I told her she could use them at the kitchen table and gave them to her, but then she told me to leave. So of course I had to ask what she was planning on doing with them, and she eventually told me she wanted to stamp her books like she was a librarian (and she clearly thought I wouldn't let her). We compromised: I told her she could, if she promised to only stamp the front inside covers, of only her books, and to put them back on the shelves when she was done. She agreed and followed through! See, daughter? Truth! Compromise! These are the great virtues!

She spent literally hours outdoors today. Doing who knows what. Taking the old hose and winding it in some sort of weird obstacle course path all around her play fort, for one. And more house lizard catching schemes, of course. Hanging out on the swings, singing and talking.

Oh and she used the phrase "brave of" as the opposite of "scared of". Like, "the house lizards are brave of cats, so why aren't they brave of us?" :-)

She told me she wants to make an apple pie, so that will be next week.

I remember that she wanted to light the candle during dinner (something they'd talked about in Sunday School), and when Dotty asked why we were lighting it, Lucy said, "It means the spirit of the Lord," and then she said a lovely prayer to bless our food and pray for those who don't have enough food.

She watched a Phineas and Ferb episode where they went to England, and Candace was channeling Sherlock Holmes for his superior busting abilities, so Lucy got a hat and her magnifying glass and went around the house noticing clues, and I had to wear a different hat and follow her around taking notes and telling her how awesome she is.

We read a book about the founding of the Girl Scouts and practiced saying the Girl Scout Promise (which she's supposed to memorize).

Saturday, September 6, 2014

Super Mario Galaxy.

Interrupted by needing to leave for skating lessons!! OK, probably I was more excited than she was (excited to get to skate, not excited for her to skate). But she did really well! She didn't have any emotional breakdowns, which seems pretty huge. And she even wanted to keep practicing a little during the practice time after her lesson (and usually they expect that the littlest kids [of which she is one] won't keep practicing). And then she hung out with Norman and played the Phineas and Ferb game on her tablet while they waited for me to be done with my lesson.

Apparently while Norman and I were out on our date, she and Dotty watched a bunch of YouTube videos of Disney songs in foreign languages.

More Super Mario Galaxy.

Watched some Word Girl.

Played with her dolls.

I read her another book about lizards (and told her the correct pronunciation for "anole", which I had to look up last night after I read her the other book about lizards).

And then she and Norman had a chat about what tattoo parlors are like (because Norman and I were in one today).

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.

Thursday, September 4, 2014

OK. Today. Let's see. Phineas & Ferb game on the tablet. (FYI, this game is all about cause-and-effect physics stuff and the different states of water.) She also used it to watch some Word Girl. 

She watched this Mickey Mouse Clubhouse DVD she got from the library. It's awful, but they're big on making choices to solve problems.

Either today or yesterday she was typing out numbers in order and the alphabet in Wii messages, with the intent of teaching little kid house lizards at her little kid house lizard kindergarten.

She spent a long time today coming up with superhero titles for each of us and what our powers are. She also got out her number dry erase workbook in order to use it as a list. Beside each number is a plan for defeating bad guys. These are the kind of hieroglyphics she draws (very influenced by her Blue's Clues days, I think). For instance, she told me that plan #3 is "lie to the bad guy about where our hideout is" (house, speech bubble, person, sound waves, bad guy person).

I think she also drew some sort of newspaper.  

Oh and she had me help her make a pattern with her beads.

And then we went to a Girl Scout meeting! She seemed to really enjoy it. We mostly played ice breaker / getting to know you type games. It got a little loud for her at one point, but other than that it was good. We played a game that resulted in her writing down some names I helped her spell, and writing her own name about 10 times. She also wrote down "me" while I wasn't looking! She spoke up nice and loud when it was her turn to introduce herself, and she made sure to ask exactly what it was she was getting into when she read the Girl Scout promise with the rest of the girls. :-)  Pretty sure she's in, so I've got some shopping to do and some paperwork to fill out!

And we didn't read a book before bed, because she wanted me to read the Girl Scout Law and the Girl Scout Promise and go over the calendar with her instead.

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.)