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, 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".

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.

Thursday, July 23, 2015

So pretty much Lucy did five things today:

--built things/played with Legos

--watched Curious George and various other PBS Kids videos

--went with Norman to buy some groceries

--played a very complicated role-playing storytelling board game with Norman for THREE HOURS

--made herself a PB&J



THREE HOURS. I'm not sure if it's all the tiny pieces, or the storytelling aspect, or the fact that she was doing it with Norman, but I'm very impressed.

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.

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. 

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. 

Saturday, May 16, 2015

This morning, with her newly-sorted Legos, she made up a story where an animal rescuer rescued a goblin and gave him a new arm and fed him junk food and media. It was amazing.

While I was at skating, she played Pokemon Crystal while Norman played Brave on the Wii.

While Norman and I were out, she watched Dotty play a different Pokemon game, and they played outside for a little while.

After we got home, Lucy made up another Pokemon (Tentslee? or something?) for me to have for my starter Pokemon in the Cartoon Region, and she gave me my pokeball (plastic easter egg) and pokedex (broken CD case).

Played some games on her tablet.

Hopped on YouTube kids to watch more DisneyCollector videos, but she wanted the ones where the lady dresses the dolls that Lucy has up in new playdoh dresses, so that Lucy could dress hers up in playdoh while she watched.

She made Ariel a seashell button!

She read a book in her playroom, but when I asked she didn't want to tell me which one. She's very weird about admitting to reading. I don't know. But I think the book was a Mickey Mouse comic book we got from the library.

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 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 6, 2014

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And skating lessons are still going well.

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

Week of September 29, 2014

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Skating lessons. She's doing awesome. 

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

Lots of Duplos and Legos, as always. 

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

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

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

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

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

Saturday, September 27, 2014

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

Played outside.

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

Watched some Phineas and Ferb.

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

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

I read her I am Abraham Lincoln before bed.

Friday, September 26, 2014

Let's see, let's see... Some plumbers came today; she found that rather exciting and went around with her tools "fixing" things for a while.

She watched the Disney World DVD.

She watched some Phineas and Ferb.

She spent a good long while building with her Legos.

We watched some Kurt Browning figure skating performances on YouTube.

She played a geography game on her tablet. This was while she was hanging out with me in my craft room, which she pretty much never gets to do, so she was very excited about that. She was watching me paint a shirt with fabric markers and water.

So then she decided to make some similar designs with marker on paper and go over them with water and a paintbrush like I was doing.

She can draw a pretty impressive peace sign.

Spent some time playing outside off and on.

Asked to help make the pizzas for dinner, so I had her put on the toppings.

We read And Tango Makes Three before bed (in honor of Banned Book Week).

And then when he was tucking her in, she and Norman talked about who makes the laws, and legislative bodies, and Mexico, Canada, Hawaii, and lava.

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).