Phoebe did what now?: Reading in the wild and other tales

This morning Andrew texted to say that he was at the airport, beginning his journey home. He's been in Vancouver, BC, for a conference (APSA). His room at the hotel was on the 23rd floor, affording him a beautiful view of the harbour:

Because he was so high up in the air, he felt at liberty to sleep with his curtains wide open—the risk of peeping toms is rather low 23 storeys up. He was surprised when he woke up to find that he was being watched afterall:

This seagull was very curious about the goings-on in his room:

As you can imagine, it's been a wonderfully uneventful and unemotional week to have my professor husband be out of the country. Anywho...

This morning he texted to say that he was at the airport on his way home. Phoebe had questions about what he was going to have for brekky (breakfast) and lunchy (lunch) and dinner (dinner). He's having Timbits for breakfast, which Phoebe didn't approve of because doughnuts aren't very healthy. So then he told her he was having a whole head of cabbage for lunch and she didn't approve of that because that is way too much food. So for dinner he told her he was going to have a moderately-sized head of kale. 

She thought that was okay. 

Then he asked if she stayed dry. 

The "oh" was Phoebe's response to something else he had said (I just typed it at the same time that he asked if she stayed dry), but it makes the conversation better.

"Did Phoebe stay dry?" he asked. 

"Oh." I typed. "She diid."

Yes, I typed that she diid. Obviously that's a typo. So my phone so helpfully corrected that to read:

"Oh. She died."

I corrected that mistake as quickly as I could, but...uhhh...yeah. Thanks, autocorrect!

For the record, Phoebe is just fine. Thriving, even!

Her hair was a mess yesterday, but here she is sorting marbles:

And here are all the kids at the pool on Thursday:

Right now Zoë, Benjamin, and Alexander at at Grandpa and Darla's. Phoebe really wanted to go, but I felt that she should prove that she can stay dry without her Chummie on first. So she's going to sleep without her Chummie for the first time since starting with Chummie. We'll see how it goes!

She's lonely this morning. I did a few puzzles with her and then told her I needed to do some work, which I haven't done yet (though I did do some hand dishes). So she went to ask Miriam if Miriam could do some puzzles with her (Miriam stayed home because she's come down with this cold the rest of the kids are over). 

Either Miriam said no or she didn't ask Miriam because the next thing I know, Phoebe is all upset because Rachel's stuffed animals are gone. 

Phoebe used to enjoy going into Rachel and Miriam's room to play with a pillowcase full of stuffed animals that they kept under the bed. Most of the stuffed animals were Rachel's, since Rachel is prone to developing attachments on such items. Only a few of them belonged to Miriam, who is not prone to establishing attachments to stuffed animals. Rachel packed away her meaningful stuffed animals...

"I don't have stuffed animals for you to play with. They're packed away in the storage room!" Miriam said with exasperation. 

"Fine!" Phoebe said. 

"Why don't you play with your own stuffed animals?"

"Because that's not as interesting!"

Phoebe disappeared into the basement, where I had a hunch she was going to go investigate in the storage room. I knew she wouldn't find anything because I put the boxes of Rachel's stuff quite high up. But I also knew she'd be mucking around down there.

Sure enough, she soon came upstairs and said, "I didn't find any boxes of stuffed animals, but I did find a box that says Zoë."

"How do you know it says Zoë?" I asked.

"Betuz! It's a word that has only three letters and they are Zzzz...oooo...eeeee!"

She showed us the box she found and it, indeed, said Zoë.

"That's just a box of clothes for Zoë to grow into," I explained.

"Aw, man," Phoebe said. "I was hoping it was going to be toys."

It was pretty cool to see Phoebe reading "in the wild," as it were (even if the wild was merely the storage room). I'm thinking we should simply take some stuffed animals from the large collection Phoebe has in her room and keep them under Zoë and Miriam's bunkbed in a pillowcase. Perhaps that way they would become more interesting to play with...