Barking Mad

Frosty Lunch

Crappy cell phone photo I took a couple of weeks ago while Gaby was waiting for her bus as it snowed. 

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If I've told Gaby once, I've told her a million times . . . the snow that comes down isn't exactly clean, so don't try catching it on your tongue and then eating it.  Yuck!   However, like kids the world over, she still tries to catch the snow.   I did it.  Her siblings did it (and still do it, despite the older two turning 23 this Saturday!) and I imagine she'll do it again, like she did today!

The fact that Gaby came home and told us about this, makes me laugh even harder than what she said that was actually pretty funny.  She told us that as they were walking to lunch today, it started to snow pretty heavily.  So, in a line of 16 other first graders, my kid stops and stands there, mouth open wide, tongue lolling outside of her mouth, catching snow flakes.   Her teacher looks at her and says, "Gabriella, please stop that.  We don't eat the falling snow."    Gaby said that she shrugged her shoulders and then told her teacher, "Sorry Miss F., I was just trying to get a jump on my lunch." 

I was trying to keep a straight face as she relayed the story to us, but I failed miserably.   I reminded her once again, in between my giggles, that it's probably not the safest idea to eat snow.  Gaby grinned and said, "Well at least it wasn't the yellow snow on the ground!  You should be really glad I didn't eat that!"

Yes Gaby, I am in fact very happy that you didn't eat the yellow snow.  Very happy.

In other news, Gaby informed us that she's joining the drama club at school.  I'm not surprised at all that she decided to do this.    Especially not after watching my precocious 7 year old, read this story.

Now, keep in mind that she doesn't like this book because she thinks it's a "baby book" but in her class, they have to read the stories in the book, out loud,  one an evening, for the rest of the week.  I get why she doesn't like reading the book; she is after all, halfway through "The Hobbit".   Yes, she's reading "The Hobbit."   She wanted to read Jenny Lawson's "Let's Pretend This Never Happened"  (she saw me re-reading it a few weeks ago, and laughing, so she assumed that she would find it funny as well.  After all, there's a picture of a cute little mouse on the cover!) and when I took the book out of her hands (she only got about two pages in), she went back to The Hobbit.  She loves The Hobbit and can tell you the names of all the dwarves, and can tell you exactly why Smeagol is no longer a hobbit but a gollum!  Yes, she's also seen the film too.   Loved it.  Incidentally, she can also sing "Misty Mountains Cold", from the film.  She's teaching herself the full version from the book itself.  

Anyhow, where was I?   Oh, that's right, the Frog and Toad book she has to read at home.  Or is it Toad and Frog?   I don't know.  There are two amphibians and one is a frog and one is a toad, and I think the stories are kinda funny.  One of them is rather stoic, putting up with the other.  I guess there are several Frog and Toad/Toad and Frog books and they'll be reading them all through the course of this month - or if you're my daughter, this week.    So she decided to just read the entire book, out loud tonight, and for good measure, she read the last story in it "The Dream" twice, just to make her point that this book is too easy for her.

I love to listen to her read out loud, but because she is as avid a reader as her parents, she'd rather just dive right in and read to herself.     She was so into the story tonight that I decided to get a video of her reading.   Oh and the "bad word" she apologizes for, about a third of the way through?  It's "shut up."  We don't say that and she isn't allowed to say it. 

 

After watching the video, is it any surprise that this kid signed up for the Drama Club? 

 

 

Fluffy Snapshot

I was sitting on our bed, playing Bingo on my phone while Gareth was at the computer, replying to emails.    The house was quiet except for the hum of the heating system, the occasional gust of wind as it tossed snow at the windows, and the tat, tap, tat, tap of Gareth's fingers on the keyboard.    I was about to bust loose with a string of expletives for not being fast enough to get a Bingo! when we heard a massive THUD come from Gaby's room.   Gareth ran in there to make sure she was alright.  Apparently she had fallen out of bed.   I stood outside her bedroom door while he got her situated back into bed.   

Gaby was mostly still asleep despite her hard landing, and Gareth asked her if she was hurt?   She looked at her daddy through sleep-heavy eyelids and shrugged and said, "Not at all."   Then he asked her what happened and she said one word, "Geronimo."  

Sir-Fluff-a-Lot had climbed into bed with her,  stretched himself out, and in the process, pushed her out of bed. 

Once she was settled back into her bed, snuggled up under her covers and tucked in amidst her lovies, Geronimo made himself comfortable at the foot of her bed.   I went into check on her a few minutes later and made a point of pointing at him and telling him, "You don't need the whole bed, you stay down here, or else!  I mean it 'Nimo!   Gaby's too nice to be firm with you, but I'm not!"  

As our evening wore on and we walked through the house, locking doors, closing blinds, and performing our typical nightly rituals, I peeked into Gaby's room to check on her one last time. This is the sight that greeted me: 

It doesn't matter that Gaby was the pushee and Geronimo the pusher, there's still no lovie that compares to the fur beast that she often refers to as her BFFF   . . . Best Furry Friend Forever. 

That cat had damned well better have nine lives!  Because one is going to be far too short for that little girl! 

 

7

It seems that every year goes by a little faster.    I could swear that it was just a year, maybe a year and half ago, that Gaby was this little chunk of a monkey!

Ohhhhh that bald head!   I used to love to kiss the top of her head and just inhale!  There really is nothing in the world like bald baby heads!  Well that and fat little baby thighs, and when Gaby was a baby there was certainly no shortage of either!

Of course, we finally discovered what the reason was, behind it taking forever for her to get a single hair on that gorgeous head of hers!   It was all kinked up under there! 

 And now?  Well now she's morphed into this amazing, gorgeous, funny, tall child with more long, beautiful  hair than she knows what to do with!   It still falls into long beautiful ringlets, but she prefers it as straight as she can get it (because of course, those with curly hair hate it, and those with straight hair want curls!), despite it's determination to curl right back up no matter what we do to straighten it!

Today, that itty bitty baby girl turned 7!

6 was quite the year for Gaby.  She traversed some pretty major roads during the year, filled with some deep potholes and bumps, but together, we've all managed to get her through the year and come out this side smiling. 

Gaby has made so many discoveries about herself and the world around her this past year.  She's learning and picking up new concepts and embracing everything she can get her hands on in an effort to discover everything there is about her universe.    She hardly ever accepts "I don't know" for an answer, so we've tried to eliminate it from our vocabulary in order to support and encourage her drive to learn about everything.   

There's nothing she won't try . . . well with the exception of holding a hissing cockroach!  That's apparently where she draws her own personal line.   Gaby has however decided she wants a pet tarantula and being that we said no to letting her have one, (I can just see Geronimo making Tarantula Tartare, and then there's the little issue of something like that, in my house, giving me the mother of all heartattacks if it ever got out!) we have hesitantly agreed to take her to a place of some sort where she can touch things like that and give her mother a stroke while doing so as well as snakes, lizards, and other things that I would like to believe don't really exist except in the mind of horror writers the world over she finds fascinating.   In the meantime, I will be asking my doctor to up my dosage of Xanax. 

 Of course, what's a birthday without your best buddy right there to celebrate with you?

And to inspect all of your presents. 

And to try and get himself airbrushed in the bargain?

Yes, Geronimo decided he needed to be front and center when Gaby tried out her Crayola Marker Airbrush thingy.    He damned near got himself airbrushed! 

Of course, I should have expected as much, especially after spending Christmas Eve assuring him that I did not in fact, need his help wrapping presents!

Geronimo managed to behave himself the rest of the evening but was once again, front and center, Christmas morning!

He is never ever far from his best friend and on her birthday morning, where do you think he was found?    Snuggled up close to her!  

Happy Happy Birthday, our beautiful Gaby Rose.   May every day be as blessed as much as you have blessed mine and daddy's lives! 

Buzz Lightyear Would be So Proud!

Gaby has this (mostly) cool little habit of trying to prettify (don't hate me because I can make up words on the fly!) normally mundane objects she finds around the house.   These aren't things like appliances or furniture - although I'm the first to admit that some of our stuff could use a little "prettifying" . . . nope it's stuff like the gallon of milk in the fridge on which she's occasionally drawn pictures of happy pink and white,  or blue and yellow spotted cows munching on bright green grass,  or left the occasional tag-line on the huge gallon bottle of vinegar that I use for household cleaning; right underneath the word "Vinegar" she wrote, "SMELLS REALLY YUCKY!"  

So when I come across her handiwork, I shake my head and giggle.   

Today while I was in the loo, sitting there - well you know, taking care of business, I happened to notice that Gaby's creativity has reached new heights. 

This is what one normally sees when perched upon the potty: (well OK, this is the view when certain monthly regularities visit me) 

I've had that little white pedestal box forever.  Painted it when I was big into blue and white bathrooms festooned with seashells and seahorses.  One of these days I'll paint it to match Gaby's much-desired pink and brown bathroom.   

Anyhow as I was sitting there looking at the box of Always feminine doodads and admiring Gaby's liberal use of sticky glitter-flowers, I noticed that she added a tagline to the name of the Always Infinity brand of pads.  Here is a closer look at the wit of my almost 7-year-old daughter: 

Something tells me Buzz Lightyear never saw his famous exclamation used in quite this manner!  

Gareth is probably going to read this and breath a sigh of relief that the bathroom in our house that he frequents doesn't lend itself to Gaby's creativity, and an even deeper sense of relief that thanks to the fact that when Gaby was born, I had my tubes tied, negating the need for certain other means of birth control, that when discovered by a precocious little girl, would lend itself to whatever popped into her head!   It's bad enough that she recently got bored when using the loo and happened to spy a box of tampons in the vanity under the sink and decided to read the instruction sheet.    She came out of the bathroom after washing her hands, with a look of what can only be described as sheer incredulity mixed with terror, and said to me, 

"You seriously have to put these things up there?" 

I can't wait to see if she decides to get creative with my box of Tampax Pearl tampons. 

First Day of First Grade

After a lot of prayer, discussion as a couple and then discussion with Gaby, and then more prayer, we decided to enroll Gaby in a local private school.    Naturally, after the events of last spring at the public school she was attending, she was very apprehensive to go back to school, yet wanted to be in school.   Gaby spent a lot of time getting to know the staff of her new school, and walking around the grounds and familiarizing herself with everything, and she wants to go back to school.   We've let her know that she can go back to homeschooling if at any time she doesn't feel safe.  

To say she is, and has been (since we made the final decision and told her about it) excited about her new school would be an understatement of epic proportions!   Despite a few nervous jitters, she was all smiles this morning!

Wet hair notwithstanding, on a cooler-than-usual (fall is coming, and I for one, can't wait!) morning, she was more than happy to let me take the "first day of school" photos.     I think she looks so stinkin' cute in her uniform! 

It wasn't an easy decision, making the choice to put her back into school, but we feel we've made the right choice for Gaby.     We had a lot of fun homeschooling - which didn't end in June, yet continued throughout the summer, but when it came down to it, after spending a lot of time with the staff at Gaby's new school, and again, a lot of prayerful consideration as a family,  we know that doing this is the absolute best choice for her.    It means sacrifices and several changes, but all are well worth the investment in Gaby and in her education.   After all, an investment in her education, is an investment in her future.   That's what we believe anyhow. 

Based on the non-stop conversation I've been having with Gaby since she got home from school today,   I think this is going to be a good year.   A very good year!