School Games and Poetry

When I picked Julia up from school yesterday, she filled me in on the latest kindergarten info, including a pretend-play game she and her friend started that has caught on like wildfire.

JULIA: So, Mom, LOTS of other kids are joining into the game that Yazzie and I play in housekeeping.  Even the BOYS are coming to play it!
ME: Oh, really?  It must be a fun game!
JULIA: It is!  So, in our game, I'm sixteen, Yazzie's seventeen and she turns eighteen, and we're gonna have BABIES.  But Yazzie's weren't born yet. 
ME: And yours are born?
JULIA: Yeah.  They're both ZERO.  Like, one of the boys likes to pretend to be my baby, and now some of the OTHER boys are joining in to be, like, my BROTHER or something.
ME: And...are you...do you still live with your moms?
JULIA: No, our mommy's mean, so we have to live in a CAFE.
ME: Ohh.  Okay.

So.  Let me get this straight.  My daughter has initiated an ongoing game of Teenage Mothers with her classmates?!  Not only that, but Teenage Mothers who ran away from home to raise their babies in a cafe?

Awesome.

When she's not playing 16 and Pregnant, Julia is still hard at work on her books of poems. 

Her newest collection is entitled "How Can That Be?":

The title poem goes like this:

(Translated to standard English): "Said the carrot to the hare to the plate to the snail: Where is whale today?"
JULIA: So, now do you see why it's CALLED "How Can That Be"? 

ME: Uh... yeah.  (no, not really.)
JULIA: Because, like, A TALKING carrot!?!

Oh.  Okay.  That's why.  The talking hare, plate and snail have nothing to do with it though.

Here are two of my favorite poems:

Sunsete

"Sunset hiye, Sunset Lowe, Sun sets set the Waye they go."
I'm especially fond of her Olde English spellings here.

And:

sing.

"Sing a song of joy and sadnis.  Sing a song jest rite."
I really love this one.  It makes me want to get up and sing a song jest rite.

And finally, can I just point out what my freakishly artistic child drew yesterday?  Behold Madeleine's latest, a gift to bestow upon her baby-sitter Lizzie:

Between Julia's teenage mother games and Madeleine's advanced artistic proficiency, these kids are going to grow up WAY too fast!!