Household Activities

Madeleine was hard at work yesterday afternoon on a piece of artwork, and after she was finished, she proudly presented it to me.

MADELEINE: Look, Mama!  I made a BABY!  Do you like my baby?  So Mama.  What LETTERS do you spell for BABY?

I spelled the word out for her, but apparently she decided that since she had one "b" already, another one was simply superfluous.  Hence the headline of "bay" multiple times:

Now, aside from the fact that the figure above looks WAY more like a 30-year-old woman than a baby, I have to say I'm really pretty impressed with Madeleine's artistic skills.  She continues to display her freakishly good fine motor abilities in this drawing, with the little upwards curl on the side of the baby's skirt, the proportions of the body parts, and the stylin' hairdo.  I mean, I'm pretty sure that if I drew a person, it wouldn't look any different from the above.  (And it might even look worse.)  Madeleine may look an awful lot like me, but she most definitely did not inherit my (lack of) fine motor/visual arts skills.

If you can't tell from the photo, the picture is currently on display on the dining room wall; it was Madeleine herself who decided to hang it up there with tape, announcing to me: "YAY!  My art project WORKED!  It made everyone HAPPY!"

How right she is.  That bay she drew TOTALLY made my day yesterday.

Madeleine has not done any coloring today, however, since Julia has the day off from school due to Rosh Hashana.  Therefore, the girls have alternated between fighting with each other and delving deep into pretend play games together.  One of their games was My Little Pony: School, during which the big ponies like Princess Cadance and Princess Celestia were the teachers, and the smaller-sized ponies were the pupils:

When Julia eventually ditched the game to go read up in her room for awhile, Madeleine carried on, thrilled at the chance to be in charge for awhile.  At one point, Madeleine decided it was time for the ponies to go up to the school media center.

MADELEINE: So, Mama!  The ponies are going to MEDIA.  And...and that means LUNCH!  So they're going to LUNCH!

Wow.  I guess you do learn new things every day.  I always thought going to media meant going to the library.  Now I know that it means LUNCH.  Duh!

Julia has since returned from her reading spree, and is back to her OTHER favorite activity: galloping.  Given the amount of time she spends galloping back and forth between two specific points in our house, it's no wonder she's such a bottomless pit of hunger all the time.

In case you readers haven't yet figured out what is so special about Gallop Time, Julia explained it to me today:

JULIA: Mom?  Want to know what I like about galloping?
ME: What?
JULIA: (dreamily) Anything can happen!
ME: You mean, like, in your imagination?
JULIA: Yes!

Gosh.  Maybe we'd all be a little happier if we incorporated Gallop Time into our days.  Ethan can perhaps ditch his routine pacing for a good gallop back and forth across the office, and that *JUST MIGHT* help him solve whatever programming problem is being worked out in his head.  Because, after all, when you're galloping, ANYTHING can happen!