A-chan wants to be a knight. That's her costuming choice for DragonCon this year. So when I mentioned that we would be going to see knights swordfighting today, she was just ecstatic. Got a little upset when I told her that she was too young to join in though. We went to the Regional Fighter Practice for the local SCA groups today. It was fun! She loved it and wants to know when we can do it again. Youth combat starts at age 7 and she still seemed excited about it even though she has to wait 2.5 years. But after seeing all the people in garb today she decided that she wouldn't mind dressing up "like a princess" sometimes too.
I had a great time. We met lots of new and wonderful people who were very nice! And it was awesome just to sit under a pavilion and watch everything. Although I got pretty badly sunburned, A-chan just got a tiny bit pink. I took sunscreen with us. I always do take sunscreen. It's just that I've never gotten good at actually using the stuff. Luckily it doesn't seem to matter for her, just for me.
On the drive home she sang along to "Here come the ABC's" by They Might Be Giants. It was soooo cute. And then she asked if we could play checkers when we got home. It was a tough game, but I won by two pieces. We tied on tic tac toe.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Friday, June 12, 2009
Watercolored people
A-chan loves my watercolor pencils. Originally purchased to help when designing temporary henna tatooes, the watercolor pencils are now entertainment for a whole evening. The fact that she can draw/paint on each of us is fun. The fact that it easily washes off in seconds with just water is my fav part :) She's been enjoying doing henna on me for a while, but her henna is very...let's say abstract. And it stays for a couple of weeks. Lovely watercolor pencils, I shall make an ode to thee. Anyway, she spent about an hour and a half painting flowers and hearts and fruit all over our arms and feet tonight while we watched Kodocha.
Yesterday we went to Stone Mountian to visit with friends and relax a little. A family of tourists happened to see a tortoise on the side of the hill next to the road and stopped to take a closer look. When they saw that the tortoise was laying eggs, one of the boys ran down the hill to tell us so we could come and watch too. It was pretty awesome. Definately not something you get to see often. A-chan seemed fascinated.
Today was Friday. Fridays are currently significant because they are the days when A-chan can play online computer games at pbskids.org. I've limited the weekly time she can spend on these games to just the one day because she was liking them way too much and ignoring the essential things in life like...popsicles! It's working out pretty well, I think. She knows exactly when she can play the games and doesn't pester me about it during the week unless she occassionally wants to know how many more days til friday. And it's also a powerful deterent to bad behaviour cause she knows she might not get her game time on friday if the rest of the week she was a cranky ogre.
She helped prepare the corn on the cob for our dinner tonight. It's amazing how much she loves the stuff. I seriously think that she would have eaten two whole ones by herself if I'd let her. After cleaning off all the corn silk and singing a song about it, she read some of "Cinderella" to me while I cooked. A few of the words gave her trouble like 'widowed' and 'step-mother'. The way she pronounced Anastasia was priceless.
Yesterday we went to Stone Mountian to visit with friends and relax a little. A family of tourists happened to see a tortoise on the side of the hill next to the road and stopped to take a closer look. When they saw that the tortoise was laying eggs, one of the boys ran down the hill to tell us so we could come and watch too. It was pretty awesome. Definately not something you get to see often. A-chan seemed fascinated.
Today was Friday. Fridays are currently significant because they are the days when A-chan can play online computer games at pbskids.org. I've limited the weekly time she can spend on these games to just the one day because she was liking them way too much and ignoring the essential things in life like...popsicles! It's working out pretty well, I think. She knows exactly when she can play the games and doesn't pester me about it during the week unless she occassionally wants to know how many more days til friday. And it's also a powerful deterent to bad behaviour cause she knows she might not get her game time on friday if the rest of the week she was a cranky ogre.
She helped prepare the corn on the cob for our dinner tonight. It's amazing how much she loves the stuff. I seriously think that she would have eaten two whole ones by herself if I'd let her. After cleaning off all the corn silk and singing a song about it, she read some of "Cinderella" to me while I cooked. A few of the words gave her trouble like 'widowed' and 'step-mother'. The way she pronounced Anastasia was priceless.
Saturday, June 6, 2009
A Full Day
Today we went hiking at the Botanical Gardens. We did the Orange trail because A-chan wanted to see the river. It was a lot of fun. We saw dragonflies, a beautiful lizard, two turtles, some tiny frogs, butterflies, faeries and some birds. Her stamina has definately improved, she didn't ask me to carry her at all. We both loved being in the forest. Afterwards we went and got smoothies for lunch!
Next there was the matter of her allowance to sort through. She used the Coinstar machine to count some of the change from her Totoro coin bank and got almost $10! When we went to the toy store to buy replacement sand (her sandbox had gotten flooded last month and just recently got cleaned out thanks to some wonderful friends) she chose some princess mega blocks to purchase with her allowance. We also replaced her doctor kit which has been missing for a very long time. This time she chose the pink one instead of the blue one.
We also went to the library and signed her up for the Summer Reading Program. She has her very own library card to check out her books with. Today we left with 14. I think she might have been more excited about the reading program than about the new toys.
She's been having trouble going to sleep lately. Typical childhood nightime fears, but I'm not sure how best to counter them. I'm trying but I don't think I'm doing a good enough job. For a while she's been doing the stalling method of coming up with ways to go to bed later and later. But tonight was the first time she actually tried to take books to bed with her and read instead of going to sleep. I feel a little guilty stopping her from it. I mean, reading is great! And I used to read in bed all the time when I was a kid. But I also know that she'll be incredibly grumpy tomorrow if she doesn't go to sleep in time cause no matter how late she falls asleep, she gets up at the same time every morning.
Next there was the matter of her allowance to sort through. She used the Coinstar machine to count some of the change from her Totoro coin bank and got almost $10! When we went to the toy store to buy replacement sand (her sandbox had gotten flooded last month and just recently got cleaned out thanks to some wonderful friends) she chose some princess mega blocks to purchase with her allowance. We also replaced her doctor kit which has been missing for a very long time. This time she chose the pink one instead of the blue one.
We also went to the library and signed her up for the Summer Reading Program. She has her very own library card to check out her books with. Today we left with 14. I think she might have been more excited about the reading program than about the new toys.
She's been having trouble going to sleep lately. Typical childhood nightime fears, but I'm not sure how best to counter them. I'm trying but I don't think I'm doing a good enough job. For a while she's been doing the stalling method of coming up with ways to go to bed later and later. But tonight was the first time she actually tried to take books to bed with her and read instead of going to sleep. I feel a little guilty stopping her from it. I mean, reading is great! And I used to read in bed all the time when I was a kid. But I also know that she'll be incredibly grumpy tomorrow if she doesn't go to sleep in time cause no matter how late she falls asleep, she gets up at the same time every morning.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Fractions of Lemonade
First thing this morning we made Lemonade ala the recipe from A-chan's Highlights High Five magazine. It was fun, it was messy and it has lots of sugar. She's been drinking it all day. But that's okay cause it's a special one-time deal that we made together. I'm sure that she won't ask for it again, right?
She's been learning about fractions the last couple of days so I took the opportunity to do more fraction fun while making lemonade. The measuring cups were fascinating to her now that they had a meaning to them. We counted the 4th cups together with both the liquid measure and the dry measure.
I'm hoping very much that she won't struggle with math as much as I do. I don't want her to be a super math genius or anything, but I don't want her to be afraid of math.
She's been learning about fractions the last couple of days so I took the opportunity to do more fraction fun while making lemonade. The measuring cups were fascinating to her now that they had a meaning to them. We counted the 4th cups together with both the liquid measure and the dry measure.
I'm hoping very much that she won't struggle with math as much as I do. I don't want her to be a super math genius or anything, but I don't want her to be afraid of math.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
A Spock Fan
My Mom took A-chan and myself to see the Star Trek movie today. A-chan was very excited about it, even though she didn't really have a clue what it was about. I enjoyed it immensely but she only watched about half of it, then got bored. At that point she played a little with her stuffed puppy named CookieTable, some with my dupatta and then I supplied her with a pen so she could doodle on leftover napkins.
She was completely unflappable in regards to the violence or scariness in the film and would simply turn away from the screen if there was something she didn't want to see. I did try to cover her eyes at one point which made her very indignant cause she could do it herself, thank you.
The vulcan hand sign she reconized from Big Bang Theory and instantly made Spock her fav character. And she ate almost an entire bag of popcorn by herself. I have suspicions that she didn't eat much lunch purposefully saving room for that popcorn.
She was completely unflappable in regards to the violence or scariness in the film and would simply turn away from the screen if there was something she didn't want to see. I did try to cover her eyes at one point which made her very indignant cause she could do it herself, thank you.
The vulcan hand sign she reconized from Big Bang Theory and instantly made Spock her fav character. And she ate almost an entire bag of popcorn by herself. I have suspicions that she didn't eat much lunch purposefully saving room for that popcorn.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Plenty of Firsts Left
It's still amazing to me sometimes to find things that are still "Big Firsts"! This evening we went to a carnival at the local mall parking lot and there were tons of Firsts for A-chan. We rode the Ferris Wheel and the Carousel, she went on the Dragon roller coaster all by herself and the Wiggly Wurms by herself. She'd never had cotton candy before and enjoyed that very much, though she professed to liking the rides more and stopped eating the sugar so she could get on another ride faster. There was a beautiful full rainbow that she took pictures of with her cell phone while we were waiting in line for the Carousel.
I had a blast. I always wanted to go to Carnivals when I was little. We went to one when I was small and one when I was a teenager. When A-chan begged to go and was sooooo excited about it, how could I say no? Part of it was me going "I want her to be able to do all the things that I didn't get to do when I was a child", of course. It was so much fun to watch her.
There are times when having a 4 year old that can read the menu is a detriment, though. She read everything. And decided she wanted a snow cone. She wasn't sure what a snow cone was, but she liked the sound of it. I didn't have any money left at that point so we left without one. But I made strawberry slushies when we got home instead. That was fun. And messy. Apparently large chunks of ice in a cuisinart make strawberry juice skirt out everywhere and I suddenly had a red kitchen. That which actually remained in the container was very tasty and proceeded to ruin dinner. It was a great use for the strawberries that we'd picked a couple of weeks ago and that i'd frozen. I might make more tomorrow.
I had a blast. I always wanted to go to Carnivals when I was little. We went to one when I was small and one when I was a teenager. When A-chan begged to go and was sooooo excited about it, how could I say no? Part of it was me going "I want her to be able to do all the things that I didn't get to do when I was a child", of course. It was so much fun to watch her.
There are times when having a 4 year old that can read the menu is a detriment, though. She read everything. And decided she wanted a snow cone. She wasn't sure what a snow cone was, but she liked the sound of it. I didn't have any money left at that point so we left without one. But I made strawberry slushies when we got home instead. That was fun. And messy. Apparently large chunks of ice in a cuisinart make strawberry juice skirt out everywhere and I suddenly had a red kitchen. That which actually remained in the container was very tasty and proceeded to ruin dinner. It was a great use for the strawberries that we'd picked a couple of weeks ago and that i'd frozen. I might make more tomorrow.
Not quite a year
I hadn't realized exactly how long it had been since I'd done any blogging. I've missed recording almost a whole year of my little girl growing up. Some catching up is in order!
A-chan is still in Tae Kwon Do and loving it. She had three yellow stripes on her white belt and is looking forward to testing for yellow belt - as soon as she really does know the form which is getting better by leaps and bounds.
She is currently going around and making sure everyone that she meets knows that she is actually 4 and a half. The half being ever so important at this age.
At DragonCon last year she dressed up as a purple Jawa again as well as a pirate. AWA was a double costume project as she and a friend dressed up as Sugar and Pepper from Snow Fairy Sugar. Her 4th birthday party was a pirate party at Stone Mountain Park and was hilariously fun. She's since discovered Pump It Up b-day parties though and I'm terrified that she's going to ask for one of those this year.
Reading is her major passion at the moment (other than acting silly for attention) and she reads a book to everyone who will sit still long enough to let her. She recently read Green Eggs & Ham over the phone to her daddy, which was incredibly cute.
A-chan is still in Tae Kwon Do and loving it. She had three yellow stripes on her white belt and is looking forward to testing for yellow belt - as soon as she really does know the form which is getting better by leaps and bounds.
She is currently going around and making sure everyone that she meets knows that she is actually 4 and a half. The half being ever so important at this age.
At DragonCon last year she dressed up as a purple Jawa again as well as a pirate. AWA was a double costume project as she and a friend dressed up as Sugar and Pepper from Snow Fairy Sugar. Her 4th birthday party was a pirate party at Stone Mountain Park and was hilariously fun. She's since discovered Pump It Up b-day parties though and I'm terrified that she's going to ask for one of those this year.
Reading is her major passion at the moment (other than acting silly for attention) and she reads a book to everyone who will sit still long enough to let her. She recently read Green Eggs & Ham over the phone to her daddy, which was incredibly cute.
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