"Mama, they don't know how to make apple juice at school!" announced M one day last week at dinnertime.
"Oh?"
She nodded. "They forget to mix it with water!"
To think that I thought that my bluff was about to be called!
My daughter's playdate ended over two hours ago, and I am still shaking my head. When Madeline's friend E comes over to play, I have to check her backpack before she goes home with her mom and inevitably end up pulling out a few of my daughter's belongings. Today it was a wall decal and a huge mound of pink playdough. At least she asked if she could take home Madeline's purple necklace and stuffed purple unicorn. It all seems kind of bizarre to me, but I imagine that E's "collecting" is just a three year-old thing. Madeline was not impressed, however, and started hoarding her toys ...
It must be interesting going through airport security with E and her backpack of treasures LOL!
This is the latest work of art that Madeline has brought home from preschool. Her art teacher explained that it was an exercise in depicting facial features, and while I can believe that, I am not sure what to think of all the red paint. Anyone think she has a future as a surrealist?
This is a scene that I don't see too frequently these days. Madeline stopped believing in afternoon naps about thirteen months ago, although I still believe! Last Thursday, Madeline spent the morning at her preschool, had a thirty-minute swim lesson, and then played with her friend E after class for about ninety minutes. It's a pretty reliable formula for nap-induction, though I am so used to Madeline not napping that I hardly know what to do with myself when she does!
What's your favourite colour?: pink and purple and red
What's your favourite program?: Little Einsteins
What's your favourite book to read?: Your books - fun to stack!
What's your favourite thing to eat?: Broccoli
What's your favourite thing to play with?: You!
Madeline wasn't a bald baby, but she didn't actually have a quantity of hair worth considering until she was at least two years old, and enough to coax into pigtails until a month shy of her third birthday. Those pigtails lasted about two hours, and haven't been seen since.
Despite seeming to devote hours of her day to adorning herself like royalty (if royalty likes cheap plastic costume jewelry, that is), Madeline doesn't care much about her hair. She likes it plain, and preferably with her bangs obscuring 20% of her vision, thank you very much.
So, last Wednesday when a little girl with pink, blue, and purple accented hair all pulled back from her face ran out of her classroom at noon, it never occurred to me that it was my child. I barely glanced at small person hovering by my side, and for a very long thirty seconds, continued to look expectantly at the door. But lo and behold, I realized that the rainbow-hued creature beside me was Madeline! Even some of the other parents waiting for the noon pick-up started fussing over my kid's transformation from a sheep dog into a poodle!
As it turns out, it was a dress-up day at preschool, and in addition to costumes for the little girls and boys, one of Madeline's classmates parents came and read Fancy Nancy (a fave of ours, and worth checking out if only for the mega-fabulous illustrations), and another supplied two of her Thai maids who are incredibly talented at styling fidgety-prechooler-hair. Madeline adores one of those ladies, and I'm trying not to feel slighted that she won't let me, her own hard-working and always-devoted mom, fix her hair. At least she allows me to do her laundry :)
