Entries from September 2013 ↓

This is Ezri the morning after losing her first tooth with a gap-toothed smile.

Ezri has been doing a lot of wishing lately. Here is a collection of recent quotes starting with some of her wishes.

“I wish no one had to die.  Not even old people until they were ONE HUNDRED.” One hundred is the largest number Ezri can conceive of.

“I wish I could have a brownie every day in the morning.  Chocolate has caffeine so it is good in the morning.”

“I wish the whole house was filled with tomatoes and scrambled eggs.  I would chomp, chomp, chomp my way through.”

 
e: I wish I was a cat.

A: Think of all the things you couldn’t do if you were a cat. Like go to preschool or eat pudding.

e: I wish I was half cat and half girl

“I wish all my grandparents and best friends all lived in Bozeman so I would not miss any of them.” We were in Bozeman when she said this visiting the maternal grandparents.

After an epic fall on the pavement, Ezri was told if she’d been less silly while walking she would not have fallen and saved herself the pain. Her answer, “I was not being silly. I was pretending my two feet had different jobs to do.” We’ve explained her feet should be a team working on one job at a time.

“How old do you have to be to read?” She wants to read her own stories, but aside from the ones she’s memorized she’s really not there yet. She recognizes some sight words and is learning her letter sounds. We told her that like a lot of things there wasn’t one age it happened, but we’d help her if she wanted to try.

Eric was downstairs supervising the kids and I was cleaning up in the kitchen. I went down to see if he needed any help, but the photo below shows he had it in hand. I asked the kids what daddy was doing. Ezri said sleeping. Ivan made snoring noises.

Ezri loves swimming in the warm pool.  Ivan not so much, but he enjoyed the wooden bridge in the gardens and climbing up to see the teepee.

Here she is smiling on Wednesday which was our travel day.  She lost her first tooth on Friday night.  Her brother helped by tackling her at bedtime and knocking it loose. She said an enthusiastic thank you to him.

The tooth fairy left four shiny quarters.  One was a Montana quarter and another had a buffalo on it.

The tooth loss happened mere moments after reading Fancy Nancy and the Too Loose Tooth as a bedtime story.

I’ll post a photo of the gap toothed smile when I have photos off my camera.

Today’s favorite Ezri quote was said in a quiet moment during a nature walk as we overlooked a babbling stream. “I wish we could fly high like birds. And that there were flying potties.”  Always thinking about the important amenities.

She is asking if the tooth fairy is real. I’ve been saying that I think if her tooth falls out and she leaves it under her pillow a present might magically appear. I’m not saying there is a tooth fairy, but. . . hang on to that tooth and we’ll tuck under your pillow and just see what happens.

Here’s what bedtime stories looked like in 2011.

Here’s bedtime stories now.

Books the Blau family is sad to return to the library include:

Little Mouse by Alison Murray in which a girl tells how her mommy likes to call her “her little mouse.” But she likens herself to brave lions, hungry horses, loud elephants, and ends headed for bed saying how she sometimes likes being mommy’s little mouse. The illustrations make this one. They are both uncluttered and detailed in one artistic stroke. By which I mean the facial expressions fit perfectly and the animals the girl compares herself to can be found in the final spread of her bedroom in subtle details like a single lion tail hanging out of her toy box. This one is lovely and Ezri likes it and her little brother is an even bigger fan.

Llama Llama Time to Share by Anna Dewdney
The parents here are enjoying all the puns about Llama’s “gnu” friend Nelly Gnu. It’s a perfectly pitched story about how hard it can be to share, but how friends are worth sharing with because of the joy they bring. The rhyming meter makes it a particularly pleasant read aloud book.

What Happens on Wednesdays by Emily Jenkins
A city girl tells us what happens on Wednesdays in her family from getting up in the morning to going to bed at night. You see her neighborhood, her relationship with mom and dad, She tells about her day from a child vantage point including the important things like putting her things in her cubby at preschool or maybe it’s kindergarten and putting band-aids on her stuffed elephant Looga. It is a great book to start discussion of what we do in any given day and how a Wednesday’s schedule might be different from other days of the week. Ezri and I talked all about what happens on her Wednesdays.

Squid and Octopus Friends for Always by Tao Nyeu
I would liken this to Lobel’s Frog and Toad in the best way. Two friends with particular personalities helping each other, making funny mistakes (Ezri loves that they wear boots on their heads), and sharing. Really easy to read repeatedly and we have. The artwork is lovely and more copious and detailed than Lobel. including cartoon speech bubbles. I mean who doesn’t want to see an Octopus and Squid in mittens, socks and hats. The page of Squid describing his dream that he has X-ray vision and looking into a submarine has a dye cut page with holes for the windows that opens to a detailed interior of the submarine and its passengers. Ivan loves this page and it can be hard to continue the story as he wants to stay with this page a long time.

You can see me reflected and trying to get my kids to look at the camera.
It makes me smile.
This is as close as they got to looking at the camera:

She is delighted.