Vocab

It was quite the night for the girls and ... language. The hits:

1) Cici had pho tonight (a Vietnamese soup) that she really enjoyed. After her first bite she proclaimed, "So flippin' good!"

2) Ruby likes using and playing with chopsticks. Except she calls them fish sticks. (And we don't even FEED them fish sticks.) After a few tries at correcting her we simply gave up and let her have fun with her fish sticks.

3) When got home after dinner Momlissa, Dadam and Cici sat down to play Uno. When Cici was forced to Draw 2 we heard her mutter something that sounded like "damn." When we asked her, "What did you say?" she very convincingly told us, "I said dim."

Is This Some Kind of Trick Question?

DADAM: Ruby, why don't you put some pants on? There's a draft coming under that door.

RUBY: A giraffe? Where? What giraffe?

DADAM: Not giraffe, draft. Do you know what a draft is?

RUBY: Yeah, a animal.

DADAM: No, not giraffe, draft. Do you know what a draft is?

RUBY: Um, a horse.

A Breakthrough.

I don't want to jinx it, but we seem to have had a breakthrough with Ruby doing you-know-what in the you-know-where. I'll follow up later this week, when it should be clearer how things are, um, "going."

Cici's First Letter to the Editor.

Yesterday morning Cici had asked to use finger paints at a not-too-practical moment, and I said no. She sat down at the table with her paper and markers, and a few minutes later delivered to me her very first protest letter. It read:

Dad,

Dad Dad
No No
Dad Dad
No No

Ha! She got sent to her room for insolence, of course, but Momlissa and I were both secretly proud of her for expressing herself in writing, and so fast. And while in Time-Out she did produce a follow-up letter equally quickly:

Dad,

I am sorry
So so sorry

Cute kid.

Hi, Nicole & Todd!

Here's a picture, just of me, just for you. DING!

Run Run Run

Those of you who know Cici well know she is extremely interested in drawing and painting and has more than a little aptitude in this area. Well, this past weekend she completed her first major work – a book she wrote, illustrated, and bound (!) all on her own. The only help we gave her were with the spellings of three words; in fact, we didn’t even know what she was working on when she would shout, “Dad! How do you spell flower?” from the other room.

I hope to scan the book itself and post it here soon, but until I can, here’s the text.

Run Run Run

By Cici

Run sed the flower run
Run sed the cat run
Run sed the lion run
Run sed the pig run
Run sed the dog run
Run sed the log run

Run sed everyone

A little masterpiece, isn’t it? Each line appears on its own page and is accompanied by a picture of the animal or object being described. When I say that Cici bound it herself, I’m not kidding; she actually folded the pages to make a perfectly functional little booklet and then fixed them together with Scotch tape.

And that’s not all – after the end of the story, the author must have found that she still had six pages left to fill up. So she simply wrote THE END in large letters on every single one of those pages.

A masterpiece.

MLK Day

Last Friday Cici was telling me that she didn't have school on Monday (which I already knew because I'm a super good mom!). So I asked her why that was, and she responded with, "Because it's someone's birthday." And when I asked her who was having a birthday, she said, "Someone who wanted to make peace."

I know it seems like a fairly small exchange, but something about it filled me with joy. I love the idea that she's at school learning about Martin Luther King, Jr. and some of the things he did, and she's only five, and she retained enough of it to tell me he wanted to make peace. Warms my heart.