A few more pics from the first day of school

 

and a video if you want it:  https://youtu.be/UETU-oRxVhY

First day of virtual kindergarten

The bike path in our neighborhood also has this wooden part

Quarantine haircut

 

The Sunday Funnies

We were visiting a waterside neighborhood and sitting on a public bench.  I asked Brian if he thought the city or the nearby house owned the enormous tree.  "Why would you ask such a ridiculous question?" Dorothy laughed.  "Nobody owns trees!"

Dorothy was playing with her skirt, and I said, "Your skirt sounds like a flag flapping in the wind."  "In Chicago," she added.

I was deciding who would make a choice first and I asked Dorothy and Willa to pick a number between 1 and 10.  Dorothy chose 9, and when Willa chose 10, Dorothy objected, "Mom said a number between 1 and 10."

We were reading a book and reached an exciting conclusion of a chapter.  "Daddy loves dead ends," Dorothy noted.  "What?" I asked.  She repeated it.  "Daddy loves dead ends...I mean cliffhangers."

I woke her up early this morning to get back on schedule for school but it didn't turn out as planned

Chocolate mustache

All the pants are getting shorter

Howdy, Partner. Over.

Tangled

We visited the Isle of Hope neighborhood and did some plein air painting

 While we were getting ready to go, I was looking for a good paper.  Dorothy reminded me, "You can't judge a painting paper by its texture!"

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The Sunday Funnies

We were riding in the car, and Dorothy asked, "Mom, does 'street' begin with an Ss, or something silent?"

Dorothy sings to her phone and it identifies songs for her.  She told me in surprise, "Mom, it's not called On the First Day of Christmas, it's called The Twelve Days of Christmas!"

Dorothy asked for a taste of Brian's chocolate soda, ran to the kitchen, and returned with a soup ladle.  "I brought the yodle-y thing," she said.

We watched Floor is Lava, a games show on Netflix, which begins with the introduction of the teams, and their personal stories.  After the game finished they announced the winner, and Dorothy jumped around in excitement, and cheered, "Yay!  They really needed the ten thousand dollars!"

I looked-up an author that we enjoyed, and commented that he is still alive and 95 years old.  "That's even older than you and daddy!" Dorothy responded.

We were in a neighbor's backyard, which included a swimming pool, a jungle gym, a water table, a climbing dome, a sprinkler, and a few other toys.  We overheard Dorothy tell her friend, "You have everything you need!"

Dorothy painted this picture of her and Willa watching the sunrise

The girls brushed their teeth for about 15 minutes

Today was supposed to be the first day of kindergarten

Our start date has been pushed-back to August 19 and the year will begin virtually.  But as you can see, I've been collecting uniforms and school supplies for quite some time.

The girls designed a bike

"Make a face like an LOL doll."

The Sunday Funnies

We were playing a card game where the numbers have cute vegetable faces on them, and Brian laid down a card and said, "There's crazy green onion guy."  Dorothy said right away, "I believe that's pronounced 'celery.'"

Dorothy refused to eat the foods we had prepared for her dinner, and we were fussing about it at length.  Eventually, Dorothy started talking in a funny voice, and added, "Will a bunch of laughs get you over my dinner thing?"

I pointed out a scar on Dorothy's knee, and she said plaintively, "I miss having my normal knee."

Dorothy heard the music of the ice cream truck in the neighborhood.  We grabbed shoes and Dorothy, Willa, and I started running through the streets on a truck hunt.  Dorothy, excited, exclaimed, "I'd recognize that music anywhere!"

Dorothy was feeding a miniature pony at a farm, and ran to me excitedly and said, "Mom, that horse has braces!"

With frequency, Dorothy has been misusing the phrase "You can't judge a book by its cover."  For example, she mentioned a story about a wolf and a rabbit, and I said that it was a fox and a rabbit, and she said, "Oh well, you can't judge a book by its cover.  I guess we'll have to watch it again and see."

Brian and Dorothy were watching the Swedish Chef on the Muppets, and when he took off his glasses, his normal bushy eyebrows showed.  Dorothy said, "Look, his eyes are mustaches!"

Dorothy scooters with her purse in case we run into the ice cream truck

Brian put together our new bed frame

Slurp

We chased the ice cream truck

Getting longer all the time

The Sunday Funnies: The Tooth Fairy Edition

The day her tooth came out, Dorothy prompted our Google Home with the phrase "tooth fairy."  Google responded, "According to Wikipedia, The Tooth Fairy is a fantasy figure of early childhood in Western and Western-influenced cultures."  Dorothy exclaimed, "Google doesn't think the tooth fairy is real!  She said a fantasy figure!"

Dorothy wanted the Tooth Fairy to leave her a toy and not take her tooth.  I said I couldn't promise, and gave her some options.  "But I think you should leave the tooth for the Tooth Fairy, and what's meant to happen will happen," I added.  Dorothy, still in tears, replied, "Or whatever happens will happen."

Dorothy wanted to communicate to the Tooth Fairy that she wanted an LOL in exchange for her first tooth, so she wore her LOL pajamas to bed.  In the morning, I noticed that she was wearing them backwards.  She explained, "When I turned over on my belly last night, I wanted the Tooth Fairy to be able to see the LOLs on my pajamas so she would know what I wanted, so I turned my pajamas around before I turned over."

After she opened her LOL, Dorothy offered, "Gram will be creeped and freaked to see that my new LOL has skin that turns green.  And 'disturved.'"

Pumping the basketball

Another cute tooth pic, and the lead-up to the pic

The First Tooth Gets a Toy

Dorothy was very excited about the Tooth Fairy and woke-up at 3 a.m.  She didn't check under her pillow, but she climbed into our bed.  We never went back to sleep, and decided to just get up at 5 a.m.  We waited for Dad to return from his bike ride, and then went into Dorothy's bedroom to see if the Tooth Fairy had come.
Video:  https://youtu.be/jMFoJ97CHU0

One down!

Dorothy wants to know how this ring got on the Gack

p.s. Grandma has sent an answer!

Dear Dorothy:

When Gacks are young their antlers are small and grow as they grow.

The ring was there from long, long ago!

This may not be true for a deer or a moose.

Enjoy your books,

Love, Dr. Seuss

Dorothy wanted to sleep on her floor this weekend

The Sunday Funnies

We attended a bike-around-the-block birthday party that ended with popsicles in a yard.  As we left, Dorothy proclaimed, "This was the best birthday party I've ever had!"

Dorothy was eating a store-bought dill pickle.  She commented, "Mmm, Mama, it still has a hint of cucumber."

I told Dorothy that she had to wait 10 minutes before I helped her with something.  "What?!" she whined.  "Ten sets of sixty seconds?!"

I opened my YouTube channel, and Dorothy looked at my screen and observed, "All of these videos feature me."

Dorothy watched YouTube videos made by children and families who are acting out different sketches.  Although she has been watching these videos for many months, she just told me, "I'm noticing that all the men characters in the videos have the same voices as the dads in the videos."

Dorothy and Willa were playing "wedding" (or, as Dorothy says, "whetting").  "You know what you can do as soon as you get married?" Dorothy asked Willa.  My ears perked up.  "You can get divorced," Dorothy informed her.

I said, "I'm going to watch the school board meeting today.  They're talking about school this fall, which will probably be virtual.  Do you know what that means?"  Dorothy replied with dread, "Freezing computers."

I was explaining to Dorothy that when I was a teenager, you couldn't talk on the house phone and use the internet at the same time.  "But that's not good," she said, "because what if you were on the phone and you needed to buy a dress before it went out of stock?"

We give that tooth a few tugs every day, but it's not ready to come out.

We got up at 6 a.m. and headed to the beach. This sleeping picture was taken on the way home.

Dorothy's dolls are busy

Willa says that if you close your eyes and hold your breath you will remember where your lost item is

Picture of grace (that's a tiara)

Swimsuit swap (they are so much happier in each other's clothes)

The Sunday Funnies

Dorothy and Willa were absorbed all day in playing pretend, and I kept popping into the bedroom to check in on them.  Dorothy told me, "You're like Jack the Narrator in The Stinky Cheese Man.  You keep popping into stories where you don't belong!"

We watched fireworks on the Fourth of July, and Dorothy commented that she likes "the ones that sizzle."

Dorothy's book showed pictures of mice doing naughty things.  One mouse had broken a piggy bank and coins were spilling out.  "Oh, this mouse busted the piñata at the party before it was time," she reasoned.

(I found some drafts of Sunday Funnies that I never published -- enjoy some old ones below!)

Days after her ballet recital, Dorothy dressed-up in the full costume and did a living room performance.  She nailed the moves, until the third verse of the song.  Then she froze and looked at me in confusion and said, "I forgot.  I forgot the moves."  That's when I remembered that the ballet teacher fades the song and offers a shortened version for the little ones!

Dorothy is into dramatic whines nowadays --

You never buy me strawberries anymore!

Dorothy whined that her friend got balloons for her birthday, and we reminded her that we took her to Disney World for her birthday.  "You took me to Disney World but the only thing I liked was the teacups!" she cried.

Dorothy is into offering solutions lately --

Mom:  My throat hurts, so I don't want to eat anything scratchy.
Dorothy:  How about you could eat a banana because those are smooth?

Mom:  I don't want to think about how dirty this Taco Bell is.
Dorothy:  Maybe you could just not think about it?

More scenes from strawberry dress day

Ahhh! We're in the same dress!

"Mom, you hung it upside-down."

2 hats

Frozen II

Dorothy and Willa are playing together again. We missed her!

The Sunday Funnies

Dorothy likes to drink ice-cold water.  I told her that when we get a new refrigerator we are going to get an ice maker.  She asked, "Can we get one of those kinds that has ice, water, and lemonade that comes out of the door?"

Dorothy watched a live game show that celebrated the launch of her favorite podcast's new book.  After it ended, she explained excitedly to Brian, "We won a theme song at the end of the show, and we also won a book that you can buy at the stores!  You couldn't buy it yesterday, but you can buy it today!"

Dorothy was playing dangerously, and I said, "Be careful!  If you slip and fall, you'll really get hurt...but it might make you lose your tooth!"  And Dorothy quipped, "I'll have to put it under my hospital pillow!"  (She swears she made this up.)

We were reading Blueberries for Sal and the story talks about canning the berries.  Dorothy asked what that meant, and I explained the process, using words like can, jar, winter, and jam.  "Oh," Dorothy said, "You mean preserve?"

We were reading an American Girl book which talks about WWII.  Somehow Dorothy ended up referring to the sides of the war as "teams".

Scooter decked out for the 4th

Neighborhood fireworks

Like an afternoon at the Cracker Barrel

Found her wiggling her tooth

So we're at this stage...

Just a fairy in her toy forest

The Sunday Funnies

Dorothy asked me what time something was going to happen, and I told her between 9 and 10 in the morning.  She made a thinking face and then said, "There's nothing between 9 and 10.  It's just 9-10."

Occasionally an ice cream truck will come through our neighborhood, and last weekend, we treated ourselves to the snow cone truck.  "Ice cream!  Snow cones!  What kind of a quarantine is this?" Dorothy asked.

I overheard Dorothy playing with her dolls, and one told the other, "I'll drive the car because I have my driver's lessons."

Dorothy asked me how bathtubs are made.  I rambled on about ceramic, and stumbled over my answer, and when I was finished, she said, "No, I mean how do they get the water to come out of the wall?"

We were watching "The Story of the Animated Drawing" on Disney+.  It was a black-and-white t.v. show that aired in 1955.  In it, Walt Disney was showing off animated stills, including Snow White.  Dorothy said, "Oh!  Snow White used to be black-and-white, and it was color later."

Sailing on her scooter nowadays