Allie is a terrific story teller and she really loves fairy tales, especially ones that contain The Big Bad Wolf (or a fox). The Three Little Pigs, Little Red Riding Hood, The Gingerbread Man, The Little Red Hen, among a host of others. There are oodles of alternative versions that we have read. She isn't a fan of the ones where the Big Bad Wolf ends up being good. She likes her villains villainous, and her good guys good. Sometimes she likes The Big Bad Wolf to be successful, such as when he eats the Gingerbread Man, or gobbles up the pigs, and sometimes she likes the hero to be successful, like in one version of the three little pigs, where the third little pig cooks the wolf and eats wolf stew and makes wolf slippers.
One night I was telling stories and Allie wanted The Big Bad Wolf and Selena wanted Harry Potter. So I told a story about Harry trying to transform a stuffed animal dog into a real dog, but messed up and turned it into The Big Bad Wolf. The Big Bad Wolf was about to eat Harry, but Hermione came and saved him. Allie didn't like that ending and retold the story where the wolf eats Harry and Harry's friends didn't see him anymore (granted she doesn't really like listening to Harry Potter so the point of her story was probably to try and aggravate her sister). Both girls enjoy My Little Pony and for bed time stories I combined My Little Pony with The Enchanted Castle (by Edith Nesbit - great book, highly recommend it). Allie really liked this angle and every night I had to incorporate the ponies and the enchanted castle.
Allie is clever. She has been playing lots of pbskids and starfall and has a lot of really good reading skills. She can spell and read "cat" and her name. She is always repeating words and breaking them up into their different phonemes. When I am reading Selena longer books without pictures, and she isn't trying to use us as a trampoline, she is scouring the pages for the words, "on" and "no". She counts how many letters she can find, and points out "oo" words.
She is in a letter writing phase and has been sending lots of letters to Grandma Judy and Nana and Papa. One day she was asking me how to spell some word and she sounded out the first letter, and then the vowel, which was a short a. She asked me what letter made that sound, and I asked her what she thought. She said, "e". I told her to write it down, then she looked at me and said, "It's not e, it's a." I guess she was testing me.
She also amazed me the other day with her problem solving. We were trying to play the Cat-in-the-Hat game, but she had destroyed the trick-a-ma-stick. We were trying to figure out what else we could use as a trick-a-ma-stick, when I thought of a pool noodle. Selena went and found one, but we couldn't get it to stand up in an arc. I honestly couldn't think of anything, but then Allie came up with the idea to use shoes as anchors. It worked perfectly. I was impressed.
Earlier in the summer Floyd took the girls to catch tadpoles. They caught one tadpole and Selena named him Party. We were taking very good care of Party, until one day when we were changing his water. We had put him in a small bowl and were cleaning out his larger enclosure when tragedy struck. I was trying to place the container back on the ground and Allie was in my way. I told her to move and she accidentally tripped over the bowl Party was in, tipping it over, and Party slipped through the cracks in the deck and was gone. :( There is no way to get under our deck. The girls were extremely distraught over his demise. Poor Allie wailed, "I made the worst mistake ever." We went and caught two more tadpoles, that we successfully raised to frogs (at least I assume that is what happened to them when they disappeared), but we still missed poor Party.
We've been doing some all-comers track meets this summer. Allie was alternately enthused and tired. The first meet she tripped and fell every single race. She was tough. She checked her knees to make sure they weren't bleeding, and then finished the race.
She often complains of being tired, and she got sick with a fever and snotty nose for a while. I had been less diligent about making sure she wasn't eating dairy. This last week I have been better, and realized that I had been giving her things with traces of dairy when I thought they were okay. I've removed those, and I think she has had a bit more energy. Most of the time when we go outside she quickly says she is tired and wants to go back inside. Typically she doesn't like to walk for very long distances. But today we went out on the nature trails and she walked the majority of the time, and was even leading the way at points. It wasn't till the end, when she was hungry for lunch that she started asking to be carried. I worry about her low energy, and hope I can pinpoint something to make her feel better.
She did a summer camp with Selena at Selena's preschool earlier in the summer. The first week she really enjoyed it and didn't want to go home. Then she got sick and got to stay home and watch lots of TV. The last two days of camp she was trying to fake sickness so she didn't have to go. But the teacher's said she was happy and fine while she was there. And once again she decided she wants to cut her own hair. I was trying to grow her bangs out, but she wouldn't keep the pony tail in her hair to keep them out of her face. I think she was getting sick of them, so she decided to cut them. She only got a bit, so I told her if she wanted her hair cut, just to tell me. Well she said she did want it cut, but this was right before Floyd and I were heading to Tahoe, and I had too much to do to cut her hair, so I told her to wait till we got back. I forgot once we got back. So she hacked her hair again. This time she gave herself a complete mullet. I took her into a stylist and got her a pixie cut. Selena and her dad commented that she kind of looked like a boy, but she seems to like it. We told her that she had the same haircut as AbbyWambach and she primped at that. Then one day she says, "I want to be a girl again." I told her she is a girl, but she insisted that she was a boy. I offered to put a pretty barrette in her hair and then she was a girl again. The next day she took the scissors to her hair again. You'd think it would be easy to keep scissors away from her, but I swear we have between 10 and 15 pairs, and she is sneaky. With the hair cutting and sticking peanuts in her nose and ears I am at my wits end. :D
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