Halloween is here!

Finger space

Dorothy is into phonetic spellings lately. Here is her kitten, aka "Sprinkles."

Class pic from Farm Day

Dress like a Farmer Day at school

Jump for joy (Olivia's birthday party)

The Sunday Funnies

 Lately I've been encouraging Dorothy to solve her own problems, especially at school.  So, I couldn't fuss at her when she came home from picture day.  "Mom," she complained, "you forgot to put something special in my hair for picture day like I asked, so I had to make my own decorations."  "What did you do?" I asked evenly.  "I had to cut out circles of white paper, color them blue, and stick them in my hair before the picture," she informed me.

Dorothy got her flu shot at the doctor and arrived at school late.  I picked her up and asked, "Did you show everybody your band-aid?"  "I tried," she answered.  "The teacher told me to stop bringing it up."

Brian bought Frosted Flakes, which for some reason Dorothy calls "Tony," as in, "What would you like for breakfast this morning?"  "Tony."

"Put on some clothes and we'll go get some ice cream."

Dorothy's 7-year-old checkup went great; she's holding slime, a flu-shot bribe

Dorothy designed and embroidered this fairy

A stitch in time

Today was picture day at school

Morning glory

The Sunday Funnies

 I love it when Dorothy doesn't know the name of something.  She mentioned that a girl in school got stitches in her foot, so she wore a bandage with "the shoes that are sort of like flip flops, and they have holes all over them, and they have no back."

I love it when Dorothy organizes things in ways that I didn't see coming.  "I can't find that little doll with brown hair," she told me.  "And I already looked in the bucket of dolls with eyes that open and close."

A few months ago at the open house for Dorothy's school, the art teacher had set up a table with a "guess the number of crayons in this jar" activity.  She engaged with each student, let him or her guess three times, and the child always seemed to guess the right number on the third try.  This went over Dorothy's head, and I had no idea at the time how often we would revisit that event -- "Can you BELIEVE that there were 77 crayons in the jar?!"

Dorothy asks questions about math that I can't answer.  The homework word problem was: "Ann had band-aids on two of her fingers.  How many fingers were not hurt?" Dorothy asked me, "Out of five fingers, or ten?"

Dorothy said they were talking about cowboys in class.  I grabbed a placemat map and pointed out the Western United States, and said a few sentences about how we expanded West.  When I was done, Dorothy asked, "Why do you keep saying 'we?'"

I mentioned something to Dorothy about how she knows all her spelling words because she got them right on her test.  She replied that she did not know if she got them right on the test.  After further discussion, I figured out that the teacher grades the tests and sends them home in a folder; I file away the papers, and Dorothy never sees them, and she's been wondering this whole time how she did on her spelling tests.

I was preparing to watch the Notre Dame game, and in an effort to preoccupy Dorothy, I asked if she had any birthday presents she hadn't used yet that she could do during the game.  "No," she said.  "I mean, I haven't used the unicorn clay jewelry set, but it inquires the oven."

That football game was the pits, and Dorothy watched it with me and chimed-in often.  Each time Cincinnati did something great and I fussed, Dorothy and her misplaced empathy would encourage me to "just think about how the other team is feeling right now."

Dinner with friends

Happy October! Happy birthday, Gram!

To/from school

I send notes in Dorothy's lunches and sometimes they come back with responses!

Lego hospital build

The Sunday Funnies

At school dismissal, some kids take private buses to their afternoon daycares, and in the end-of-day announcements the principal releases kids by bus.  Dorothy asked me, "Are there just so many buses that they have to start making up crazy names for them?"  "What do you mean?" I asked.  "There's one bus called In His Arms," she explained.

"Wouldn't it be cool if I had an identical twin sister?" Dorothy asked.  "We would do everything the same."  "Well," I responded, "even if you had a twin, she would have different thoughts and feelings than you."  Dorothy quickly countered, "What if I had a clone?"

I was painting Dorothy's nails which made me mention the roots of the terms mani- and pedi-.  "So, a pedestrian is someone who walks on their feet," I finished.  "Doesn't everyone walk on their feet?" Dorothy asked, deadpan.

Dorothy picked out a chapter book about mermaids from the school book fair.  She started reading it on our drive home.  "Don't read the whole thing tonight!" I cautioned.  "You should take your time and savor it."  "Mom," she said, "I can tell this is the kind of book I am going to read a few times."

At the pool, a chair fell over and nearly hit Willa.  "We almost hurt Willa's life!" Dorothy exclaimed.