What a doll!

How could I forget to write about this? It was so dear! The day before Georgetown's Graduation I had already turned in grades and didn't need to be on campus. So I keep Charlotte home for a special Mommy Daughter day. We snuggled and read stories. I asked her what she would like to do. She wanted to go into work. It did not make a difference that I didn't need to go. She drew on my dry-erase board and colored in a coloring book. We had talked about going to a Chinese Buffet for lunch. (We've recently discovered that Charlotte loves shrimp. Go figure.) I did need to get somethings at a store in Lexington and suggested that we could look for Sammy's birthday gift. So in Target I let her play in the toy aisle. She is always drawn to the baby dolls. She found some miniature ones, maybe six inches tall, and had three of them scooped up in her arms. I've seen her do this before, but it is so sweet the way she cares for and talks to the babies. She loves feeding them and washing them and putting them to bed. "Mommy, I want to get these!" Well, it turned out they were only $3, so I let her use some of her money to buy one. Usually this is a prompt for our children to lose all interest in a toy, but she had that doll with her every second for the next several hours, barely letting it out of her sight for a moment before bedtime.
Peter put her to bed. When he went in to check on her, she was talking to one of her other dolls, an old fav named "Sally".
"Now Sally, she's a new baby, and you're the big sister. You are two and she's only one, so you will have to be careful. She's going to sleep with us tonight. She's only one and you're two, so she might want to snuggle with me, and that's okay. You're two and you're her big sister, and she's only one, so you have to help take care of her...."
She went on like this for some time, gently trying to reassure her older doll and squelch any budding sibling rivalry. :)

Sometimes its just fun to explore the way kids think about things. Charlotte was swinging at a playground, with me pushing. Predictably she shouted, "Higher, Mommy, Higher!" (She and Sammy are SO different). She was making me nervous by letting go and whatnot, so I told her she was already high enough to go over the moon. One the next push She was high enough to go to the stars. Suddenly Charlie realized something.
"Mommy, it's daytime, there are not stars."
Curious as to what she would respond, I asked, "Well where did they go?"
Charlie thought about this a bit. "Heaven."
"How far away is heaven?"
"Really Really Really Really far."
"How long does it take the stars to get there and get back at night?"
"Um, one minute."
At this point something must have struck Charlotte as incongruous. I don't know if it was the timing or the indoctrination from Sunday School.
"Mommy, heaven is all around us!"
"That's right. So are the stars all around us too?"
"No, they're on the other side of heaven."
"Well, what else is in heaven?"
At this point Charlie overhears another conversation on the playground and says, "Strawberries."
"Oh, that's good, what else?"
"Peanut butter."
"Oh, there's lots of food in heaven. Is there anything to drink?"
"Yes. Milk. And Oranges. And orange juice."
Ah, she's a kid after my own heart. It's always about the food.

New Creation?

Ah Charlotte. So, do you know about Jack and Annie? They are characters from a popular "Magic Tree House" series. They go on adventures and find answers in books. Sammy loves them, and therefor Charlotte thinks she loves them. (They are chapter books, so Charlie can only handle them in small doses).
Charlotte likes to open the books in the pews at church and follow along with us. Sunday she happened to pull out a bible. She did in fact identify it as a bible. Then she started to "read" from it. (Charlotte can barely recognize her own name on a good day). What I heard was something the the effect of, "So Jack and Annie decided to go on a trip. They took their bag. They got on a boat, and their Mommy and Daddy weren't there so they had to go by themselves...." I hadn't realized that they were biblical characters!
This morning she was telling me about caterpillars. She almost sounded as if she were reciting The Very Hungry Caterpillar (except the numbers): "So he built a small house around himself for more than two weeks and 40 and a million and a billion days. And then he came out..." So naturally I asked, "Was he a beautiful butterfly?"
"No. A Armadillo."
Cheers!

Scientist in the future?

Man, I wish I had the time to get on here more regularly and tell you the stuff that comes out of our girls' mouths, especially Charlotte! Life is busy though. Never thought we would be a family with over scheduled kids, but it seems we are constantly on the go to practices or games or Girl Scouts (Not to mention my own meetings for church and school)! Can I just say I can't wait for summer... Oh wait, I teach at 8 am every day for a month. Sigh.
Anyway, I called Charlie a "NIT" on facebook recently: a nerd in training. I know its mostly because she just likes being like her parents, but she's been all into sciency stuff lately. A couple weeks ago she noticed something in the bathtub, so I told her, "That's a good observation!" Her response was, " I made a guess and it came true! That's what scientists do!" It was adorable, if completely wrong.
Then last week she pulled out this hard plastic ball and started bouncing it. She announced, "it sounds different on the kitchen floor than on the carpet." I was trying to clean up lunch or something, so to keep her occupied, I followed along. "If you bounced it on the table, would it sound more like the kitchen floor or the carpet?". Then she surprised me. She looked at the dining room, then the breakfast table. The dining room table has a pad on it. She said, "If I bounced it on the dining room table it would sound more like the carpet, and if I bounced it on the breakfast table it would sound more like the kitchen floor!" So I told her to try it. She decided they were all different, as were the sounds of bouncing it on the linoleum by the front door, the bathroom door, the oven, and any other surface she could find before I decided it might be best to change the game. But I have to say, she's got some brains this one.
She loves to do the stuff that Sammy does, including Girl Scouts. I did an Earth Day activity for the troop, and of course Charlie came along. I asked questions here and there of the girls and Charlie was, if anything, more eager to pipe up (often with reasonable answers!).
Charlie is quite the story teller. She'll get halfway through a story about something that happened at daycare, and then say something like, "And then the dogs ran around the room a bunch of times." I'll say, "did this really happen or are you making this up?" She won't miss a beat, "It's pretend, but I'm not done yet. LISTEN!"
Of course, Charlie has an interesting interpretation of the word listen. Somehow she seems to think it means "do what I say." When she wants a treat,but hasn't had a decent dinner, she'll demand dessert for some time, repeating, "You're not listening to me!"
One of Charlies favorite phrases these days is, "Just to remind you," She uses it like others might say "Just so you know." Last week at church she was so wild and crazy I took her out of the sanctuary. I couldn't get her to decide to calm down, and she ended up in the nursery. Then, right as the sermon was ending, she pops her head in the back of the sanctuary and stage whispers: "MOMMY! Just to remind you... I set up the chairs for Sunday school so you don't have to do it!"
Sammy's in softball these days, the violets. Charlotte is doing Tball, the red socks. Charlie's first game was rained out today, so I can't say much there. Sammy seems to have figured out how not to spend the entire game playing in the dirt. However, every girl on the team seems to a) wait until they are told to run, even though we repeatedly tell them to run as soon as the ball is hit, and b) Decide they must slow down and stop at home plate rather than running on through. Thus far they are 0-2. Sammy is so disappointed when they lose, and I try to tell her, it doesn't matter, they are just learning the game and are supposed to have fun. For some reason they have a post season tournament with this age group. So unnecessary! Also, the girls have to have face masks on their helmets and have to wear a face mask to be the pitcher's helper. It all seems so bizarre to me. They play 2 games a week too, which is murder on my laundry schedule!
One final rant. I can't decide weather this country is too germaphobic or too chemiphobic. It seems every fun thing I can think of is taboo either because of germs or chemicals. I can't tell you how many parents I have heard describe water fountains as "disgusting" in the past few months. Now, to be fair, I understand when we have a terrifying disease like swine flu out there that specifically targets children, we get antsy. But flu season is over, and these people do not seem to be talking about any sort of conditional sense of "disgusting." But okay, maybe the idea of ingesting something from a place where hundreds of other people have put their mouths is a wee bit gross. But Sammy isn't allowed to hug her friends. They might have germs! Are you kidding me? Didn't they do some study in the 70's that humans just need affectionate physical contact? How sad that kids of all people have to guard their expressions of love and friendship. Then on the flip side, as I'm looking up some fun science activities, I come across these pages with reader comments about how don't we know these activities are exposing our kids to all kinds of chemicals. (I'll only say it once, because the chemist in me has to: It's all chemicals! Even water! even oxygen!) But do people not realize that we are and have always been exposed to harmful chemicals? From the PBBP ethers in the flame retardants that all our furniture and pajamas are coated in to the carcinogens produced from cooking meat to well done (because if its' not well done, we hey there might be some germs!). Most chemicals have good and bad qualities to them, and you have to weigh the risks of exposure to this one versus that one, or the benefits of the chemical (such as a flame retardant or really great cleaner) to the potential risks. But mostly, I just want my kids to be able to hug their friends, whether they have swine flu, or flame retardant covered clothes, or (in the most likely scenario) just didn't bother to wash their hands after pottying.
I have misplaced my camera card adaptor, so I'll get pictures up when I find it.