This is boring bzzz...

 

Today Phoebe wore Miriam's beautiful Mary Poppins dress to church. Naanii found it at a thrift store (probably DI (Deseret Industries)) and mailed it to us out in Durham when she heard Miriam wanted to be Mary Poppins for Halloween. It's been a beloved dress ever since.

Here she is finishing her sweeping curtsey:

And here she is checking to see whether she was smiling because I asked her to smile at me:

We are in the throes of Christmas party prep. One of our activities at the party is cookie decorating. To hear others speak of this idea you would think we were trying to land on the moon or move to Mars or something...but literally we just think the kids would like to decorate a cookie. 

We thought we could decorate the room with some gingerbread themed garland, and since the primary is hosting this portion of the party, I cut out a little gingerbread house for each primary child and had them decorate it (with a chalk marker) during singing time. It worked out well. 

Miriam strung them on some twine to make a garland and we brought it to the church today to try it out in the room and...it looked so pathetic. It was just so short compared to the room. 

So we needed more gingerbread. 

I had already used our boxes, so I texted my neighbours to see if they had any that I could have before the recycling truck came by tomorrow. Several said, more or less, that their recycling bin was our oyster. 

I responded saying that my kids and I would be by to gratefully go through their bins like a gaze of raccoons. 

We found some great boxes and I got to work cutting them up. Miriam, Zoë, and Phoebe were decorating them just about as fast as I could cut them out! (Andrew sat down to decorate a token house, the boys were still outside after playing kick-the-can...like...many kids went out to play kick-the-can and then the game ended and most cul-de-sac kids returned indoors but Benjamin and Alexander and one of Benjamin's friends stayed outside playing under the streetlamp at the top of our hill). 

Some of the designs were quite intricate:

Phoebe was quite excited about decorating—she decorated thirteen pieces on her own.

Most of her houses feature doors (with door knobs), roofs, snowflakes, and snowmen. While everyone else kept their finished product at the table to dry, Phoebe would run each of her finished items to me so I could see what she had done. 

Then she would choose a new shape to draw on. 

One time she came in and she was like, "I need a new shape!"

"Okay, I have a house...or a candy cane...or a circle..."

"A circle?"

"Yeah. You can make it into a nice little Christmas ornament. Zoë made a lovely little snowflake design on one and..."

"No fanks. Circles are too boring. I'll take...a candy cane."

"Enjoy your candy cane."

She ran off to decorate her candy cane and returned a few minutes later to show me what she had done (it was just lovely, as always) and to pick out a new shape. 

"Actually, I think I will take the circle," she said, after much hemming and hawing. "I want to see how boring it really is to decorate a circle."

Turns out it wasn't too boring at all! She turned her Christmas ornament into a mummy by drawing a bunch of horizontal lines (for bandages) and adding some "tweepy" eyes.

And, you know, Mary and Joseph fled to Egypt with the Baby Jesus long after the pyramids had become an established tourist trap. So, you know, mummies aren't entirely tangential to Christmas... 

We, personally, put out a lot of stuff from Egypt at Christmastime. 

So maybe it's our fault...maybe we've confused her. 

*****

This last story isn't connected to much at all. It's just to say that Phoebe often shortens the word "because." She can pronounce it beautifully now. She can say all sorts of things that she used to struggle with. Just during scriptures and prayer she was telling us who in the family she considers to be a "grown up" and who she considers to be a "kid."

Mom? Dad?

Easy. Guh-rown ups. 

Rachel?

Guh-rown up.

Miriam?

Guh-rown up.

Benjamin?

Surprisingly—also guh-rown up.

Zoë?

Tricky. Perhaps a kid still?

Alexander?

Kid.

Phoebe?

Clearly a kid. Sometimes a baby, when she wants to be...because she'll always be Mommy's baby.

So, yes, she still needs to work on those consonant clusters, but we'll take guh-rown up over plain ol' doe-nup any day. We're making progress. 

And that brings us back to "because."

She can say "because," with the /k/ sound in there and everything. She used to say (and sometimes still does say) "be-tuz." Recently, however, she's started shortening it to simply: "bzzz."

For example: "I can still be a baby when I want to be bzzz I'll always be Mommy's baby."

Or: "I'm upset bzzz Alexie won't give me a turn!"

Or: "I can't sleep bzzz I have too many stuffies in my bed."

Or...or...or: "I can't sleep bzzz I don't have enough stuffies in my bed."

I'm not sure why she's started doing this, but it's pretty cute.