Writing, licked

I just caught her licking the bottom of her snow boot. Really. Why do these small people do what they do? I've no idea. "Hey, I wonder what the bottom of my boot feels like on my tongue…"

Just, wow.

She writes her name. No, for really real. On leftover night this past week, there on the table next to her plate, a pencil and paper. As I'm in and out of the kitchen prepping the our adult plates (she eats first 'cause she's sooo slow eating), Miss Monkey says, "Mamma, I wrote my name!" She hands me the paper. I gave the chicken scratch a cursory glance, "oh? Nice, well done…" or some positive parenting remark. Then I looked again. Really and truly, fairly legible, laboriously written, exaggerated preschool lettering, there it is, her full name with last letter barely hanging on the end. "OH MY GOODNESS! You're right, you really DID WRITE YOUR NAME!" This exclamation prompts The Exhausted Man off the couch to come see. We express appropriate pride and encouragement and hung the paper (to be gilded later) on the ever-more-crowded fridge. Aside: What we really need is a wall of cork-board for what I foresee as the plethora of artwork and visualizations we'll be posting about. J

Again, a following evening, during a floor pad coloring session, a GIANT name appeared in purple of course, then hands and feet on the back, dated and coveted by yours truly. I don't think I've mentioned how ridiculously excited I was to see her first creature drawings. She was pretending to "study" her little diorama sea creatures in Papa's office. I mentioned to her that "studying" meant taking notes on what the creatures were doing, and drawing them. A little while later when I checked on her, there were little drawings of blobs with eyes, nose, mouth, fins, teeth, whiskers, flippers & toes. Too too neato for words!

When she proudly decided to write her name in pencil on the carpet, I had to draw the line. Her eyes wide surprise, her newest skill though pride inducing, wouldn't be tolerated on just every surface in this house. Aside: We'll also have some chalkboard wainscot(s) in our house someday. "Let's keep it on paper, okay?" a slightly disappointed, "O-Kaaay" response.