What have I done?

This week I...

• Submitted a proposal to the 4'33" contest (Monday, October 27)
• Had a week full of typical school and work and extracurricular activities
• Celebrated Halloween (a doozy of a day, if ever there was one)
• Hosted a baptism celebration (Saturday, November 1)
• Attended a ward party (Saturday, November 1)
• Went to church, where we had a run-through of our primary program (which will be next week—and I think we can have a Zoom option on if anyone should want to join in). I also was roped into a meeting about the Christmas party, and went to choir practice (Sunday, November 2)
• Found out that I am one of 10 finalists for the 4'33" contest (today!) 
• There is an option to Zoom, I believe, if anyone wants to watch me receive my "prize"...which is giving a presentation... (Such lousy prizes in academia sometimes—right, Mom?)
• Turned in my second to last big project for my "designing qualitative research" class (today!)
• I don't mean to brag but, uh, it's 13,904 words (and I am so happy and relieved to have turned it in)

I also had to spend the entire week negotiating with the ultimate loop-hole-finder. Perhaps "ultimate" is too strong of a word because I find that most little kids are notorious loop-hole-finders.

Tonight it was that Phoebe wanted a drink, but had been told "no more drinks" before bed...so she got an ice cube from the freezer and put it on a plate. She was not drinking anything—no water, no cup. She was only eating something and no one had said anything about "no eating," although I think that is mostly implied at bedtime...

She's doing great at staying dry at night and reliably wakes up to use the potty when she needs to, so I suppose we don't need to be as concerned about bedtime drinks as we have been.

Getting her to go back to bed after she gets up to go potty in the night is a huge problem, though...so we'll continue to keep bedtime beverages to a minimum. 

And perhaps lock the ice dispenser...but...

On the way to the Halloween party she read her shoes: CRRRRRRRRROCS. CROCS!

So that's pretty cool. But...

She can also read the word "lock" and "unlock" and thus knows how to unlock the ice dispenser. 

Whose bright idea was it to teach her how to read?

In my defense, teaching her to read is only...kind of...a byproduct...of the phonics that I chose to teach her in lieu of sending her to speech therapy (which is a couple hundred dollars for a half-hour session, which...it's one thing for a doctor to recommend such a therapy but it's entirely another to have to find and pay a therapist to do that, but I promised myself I wouldn't rant about healthcare today so that's all I will say about that). 

And, you know what—she can say /k/ and /g/ now (and does most of the time) and she has been working hard on her consonant clusters (thus the c-rrrrrrrrrrrr-ocs that she wore to the Halloween party). 

But, yes, in the process she's also been learning how to read. 

I suppose, like most things in life, teaching a young child to read is a mixed bag...just like reading Dracula with your children. Sometimes your ten-year-old will decide they want to be Lucy Westenra for Halloween next year...which is cool...and other times your (independent) three-year-old will brandish a paintbrush (that she got out by herself without asking for permission), flinging black paint water all over the dining room, and declaring, "I'm going to paint Dracula and Van Helsing!" and you'll think to yourself, "What have I done?"