Dorothy's art teacher posted first grade self-portraits on Instagram. It was fun to guess which one was Dorothy's.

The Sunday Funnies

Everybody was in bed.  There was a loud noise outdoors, and Dorothy called through the hall, "What was that noise?"  I responded that it was probably a truck or something.  Then Dorothy, who has a nightlight in her room, asked, "Then why is it so dark in here?"  (The power went out.)

"Maaammmaa!"  Dorothy hollered from the shower.  "I already put out your towel," I called from the living room.  "Maaammmaa!" Dorothy repeated.  "What?" I yelled.  "Maaammmaa!" she insisted.  I stood up and walked across the house to the bathroom.  "What's the matter?" I asked as Dorothy, wrapped in a towel, stepped from the shower.  "I just have so much to tell you," Dorothy said.

Dorothy wanted her science experiment kit, which is named "My Mind-Blowing Science Kit."  She asked me to take out the "Brain Exploding Kit."

After a girl in her class said something mean to Dorothy, she apologized the next day.  "Mom!" Dorothy announced as she got into the car, "Evelyn apologized to me!  It was on the playground.  We were playing tag, and I was so surprised that I just stood there and Olivia tagged me."

Dorothy has been watching a show called Ada Twist, Scientist.  Concurrently, she has become a night owl.  Last night she posed:  "I'm going to go to bed one night with no nightlight, no sound machine, and no dolls.  Then on the next night, I'm going to go to bed with all those things.  Then I'll see which way is better to go to sleep.  Mom, what's your hypothesis?"

Lately we have been watching Fraggle Rock.  The show has many different types of characters, including five main Fraggles, Gobo, Mokey, Wembley, Boober, and Red, and other nameless Fraggles in the background.  Dorothy exploded with comments:  "I love how Red is really active.  It seems like each Fraggle's personality is different.  I kind of like how they ignore all the other Fraggles and just focus on that clump of Fraggles."

Brian was out-of-town on his camping trip, and after school I asked Dorothy if she wanted French fries, which take a long time to bake.  Eventually I served them to her with a blackbean burger, and she only ate the fries and told me she was finished.  I said, "You didn't eat your burger."  She said, "You didn't ask me if I wanted a burger.  You only asked me if I wanted French fries."  I said, "Well, we can't have only French fries for dinner."  She said, "Oh, I didn't know it was dinner time because Daddy didn't come home."

Dorothy found a notebook that she used long ago as a diary.  She was reading it, and said aloud, "I definitely spelled fools wrong."  "What were you writing about fools at age 4?" I demanded.  "April Fools Day," she answered.

"How much older is Aunt Mary Beth than you?" Dorothy asked.  "3 years," I answered.
"How much older are you than Uncle Daniel?" Dorothy asked.  "2 years," I answered.
"How much older is Uncle Daniel than Uncle Patrick?" Dorothy asked.  "4 years," I answered.
"How much older is Aunt Mary Beth than Uncle Patrick?" Dorothy asked.  "9 years," I answered.
"How much older is Aunt Mary Beth than Uncle Daniel?" Dorothy asked.  "5 years," I answered.
"How much older are you than Uncle Patrick?" Dorothy asked.  "6 years," I answered.
"Now we've got that straightened out," Dorothy concluded.

Dorothy asked me to clip her toenails.  "I hate it when they have white," she said.  "When I see white on my nails, it's a sign to me that I need to clip my toenails or bite my fingernails."

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!