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

This photo was taken after 9 p.m. because we sleep late and stay up late lately

All in a day's work

One of these teeth is loose

Father's Day was happy

The Sunday Funnies

Dorothy learned about a frog's life cycle.  The term was new to her.  At one point she called it the "frog cycle".
"Do you know what a human's life cycle is?" I asked.  "A baby, a toddler, a child, a teenager, an adult, an old person."  "A skeleton!" she added.

Dorothy asked why her watch lights up if it does not have any batteries.  I told her that it does have a battery, it's just a small little one shaped like a coin -- "It's very, very small, and when it runs out, you can buy another one and put it in the watch."  "If it's very small," she asked, "then how do you find it in the stores on the shelves?"

Dorothy has a book with a picture of Betty Boop; she later referred to her as "Betty Booper".

Happy birthday, Big Daddy!

Have Brads, Will Puppet

Tadpoles by the hundreds

Alina is legally a Lasseter!

The child at the end of the tunnel

The Sunday Funny

I (Brian) was playing Aaron Copland, and when Fanfare for the Common Man came on, I thought, "This is a teachable moment."  So I went over to Dorothy and said, "Hey, this music is a fanfare. And you know how generally they play trumpets and a fanfare for royalty? Aaron Copland wrote this for everyone - all people, because everyone is worth celebrating."  I told her the title.  Dorothy thought for a moment and replied, "Why didn't he use the word 'people' instead of 'man'?"

"Take a picture of me"

Dorothy is into pancakes

The streets were so hot today that the puddles turned hot

It took 5 minutes to find this hidden egg

Oatmeal cookies on the way

The Sunday Funnies

Dorothy had a bad dream that someone cut the bangs on her LOL Hair Surprise doll.  "It was just a dream," Brian consoled her.  "We can go to the living room and look at the doll, and you'll see she's fine."  "But I don't have the one that was in my dream," she said.

Dorothy asked me what a guppy looks like.  "You know, I'm not sure," I said.  Then I remembered that she watches a cartoon called Bubble Guppies, and I said, "But you know because you've seen them in Bubble Guppies."  I don't watch the show too closely, I guess, because Dorothy countered, "But those are mermaids."

BJD-DJLD

Dorothy came up with this pose

Sometimes the dolls walk with us

At first they were Leia braids

Proud of her pigtails

Always with the skinned knees

The Sunday Funnies

The fairy house that Brian and Dorothy built now includes a high enclosed perch for the fairies.  Dorothy, for some reason, calls this "Fairy Cabin Number One", and always refers to it by its entire name, "Fairy Cabin Number One".

In a worried mood, Dorothy complained that she doesn't like that we are sideways and upside down on the earth, because what will happen if gravity stops?

A podcast explained that Antarctica used to be desert-like.  Dorothy asked me, "Did somebody in Antarctica pray to God that it would get cold, but it got too cold?"

Dorothy relayed to me a joke she had heard:  How do dinosaurs pay their bills?  With Tyrannosaurus Checks!  "What's funny about that?" the modern girl then asked.

Dorothy is getting personal with our Google Assistant.  "Hey Google," she requested, "tell me a story while I eat dinner."

"This the best pizza I've ever had"

Happily doing a workbook? Or bribed?