Wednesday, October 01, 2008

Crazy Child

We're still dealing with her 'being Dorothy' (which sounds so suited to the Inner West lifestyle it's a little scary) on an hour-by-hour basis. Today she asked me to share the painting with her so I rolled up my sleeves and joined in. I painted a sort of blobby tree (anyone who knows me will be perfectly aware of just how substandard my artistic ability is) and showed Harry. She then grabbed her big paintbrush and painted all over it whilst saying "No, this is to go in an art gallery and you can't have pictures like that in art galleries". Not quite sure what that was all about!

We also went to a little play/musical aimed at 3-5yr olds today. Note to Self: Harriet is a pragmatist. All she knew of it was the title: Milli, Jack and the Dancing Cat. So when we went inside and sat down, there was a musician doing some really cool stuff on stage. "Where's the cat, Mama?". Repeat x5. The play started and there was the woman playing Milli, she had a little intro part, then went off stage. When the actors playing the cat and Jack came on, Harry asked again "Where's the cat, Mama?". I explained how the man with the big tail coming out of his bottom was pretending to be a cat. Oh no! The tears began "That's NOT a cat Mama, that's a MAN! And where's the GIRL?". "What girl, Harry?" "The girl, Milli." "That was the girl who was on before." "NOOOOOOoooo, that wasn't a girl that was an ADULT and there is supposed to be a GIRL and a CAT".

You can probably guess that within about ten minutes she was asking me to go home. And after another five minutes she turned to me mournfully and asked "Why haven't we gone home yet?". So I don't know that Harry is a particularly astute theatre critic at this stage.

We were at a friend's house yesterday where we read a book about a princess who holds a tea party. We read the book at about 11am. We left after about 2pm, with no further mention of it until we were about five minutes from home when Harry pipes up with from the back seat "I want to have a tea party like that princess. And have smoothies. And have cupcakes like she had." So we did a quick detour on the way home and bought the couple of ingredients that we needed. Then came home and proceeded to have a tea party, where the party aspect was so much fun that she forgot until about 4.30pm that we had made the cupcakes at all. Since then we've had a tea party set up in the playroom most of the time. She obviously loves to entertain. When you ask her the names of her friends who are coming to the tea party, she says "I don't know, they haven't arrived yet."


Oh and I keep meaning to blog about her reading. The other week she was sitting in the playroom adn I heard her reading her phonics book out loud to herself. There are two large consonants on either side of a window which has a wheel showing each of the vowels. She was sitting there sounding out the letters and then putting them all together as a word. "Buh...uh..guh...bug!" Then she'd turn the wheel and sound it out again, "Buh...i...guh....big". And she can recognise by sight quite a few words as well, so I really should have blogged this by now! She is quite stubborn though and if she doesn't want to read something then she'll yell out "NO! YOU read it!" if you ask her what a particular word is. Funny chicken.

2 comments:

JennieMo said...

Just be happy that she chose Dorothy as her new name. My friend Margaret's daughter decided that being a girl sucked when she was about 5. And we were not allowed to call her Samantha...only Sam. And when then Star Wars Episode 1 came out...we were informed that she was to be addressed as Ankin Skywalker! HAHAHA!! We can call her Samantha now! She is 15! HAHAHA!! Hey...how is the tadpole going? Have you got a cool pictures....scans? LOL!!

tigerfilly said...

Oh my goodness, I had to comment because that is the most gorgeous picture of Harriet standing on the rock. Amazing!