Sounding things out

Apparently Phoebe's doll Anastasia turns one in just five days (we're on a countdown until the party—it's going to be huge, I'm told...there's fireworks and everything). 

She made this invitation for me, which has all the information I need to execute the perfect party (and Phoebe is very proud that she's finally figured out how to draw hearts—that took a lot of practice on her part...and a lot of crumpled paper and frustrated scribbles). 

If you read carefully, you can see that the top kinda says "Happy birthday!" 

To be fair, reading left to right it says ADFBEPH, which looks like absolute nonsense.

However, reading right to left it says HPEBFDA, which looks a lot like "Happy Birthday" if you're sounding things out (and happen to pronounce birth like "birf," as Phoebe does). 

Pretty awesome spelling, if you ask me!

She also told me that she's so proud of Anastasia because she's done a lot of growing this year and is getting so strong that "she can even pull the trigger of a gun." That was...a shocking thing to hear about a baby doll from a child who has never been around guns.

And while we're talking about sounding things out, I will have you know that Zoë wrote "Girls just wanna have FUN" in the cul-de-sac, using a variety of fancy fonts. It was quite a beautiful piece of sidewalk art. The FUN part was in block letters about 18 inches tall (so no small feat) and I...honestly haven't thought much about it after the first day she drew it. 

But it's been slowly washing away. 

Today a swim team mom stopped by to pick up some of our camping chairs and while we were loading things into her minivan her young son said, "Mom, what does F-U mean?"

And I just about died of embarrassment.

I was like, "Wow. So originally that said FUN!"

But apparently the N ran away somewhere leaving the F and U behind to welcome everyone to our house!