Got math?

(photo of Abbie at a birthday party this past weekend)

Now those of you who like to see pictures have been pacified. :)

Abbie has been doing math on her fingers lately. For example, if she holds up 3 fingers on one hand and 4 on the other then she can count them all and say "3+4=7". She gets it right every time and is very proud of herself. Of course, the problem here is that the maximum she can do is 5+5. Twice now this has caused a major meltdown. Last night she freaked out because she tried to do 5+6, but couldn't get to 11. When I told her that 5+6 equaled 11 she got really upset with me and there was lots of crying and carrying on. I wanted to show her on a piece of paper by drawing out 5 lines in one row and 6 in another, but she wouldn't allow it. Then, I wanted to show her by having her hold up 5 fingers and having me hold up 6 fingers, but this was not allowed either. Finally, I decided to show her by holding up 5 toes and 6 fingers, but this just irritated her more. Keep in mind that I would have rather just dropped the whole thing, but she kept insisting that I prove it to her while simultaneously placing restrictions on the way in which I proved it to her. I feel really bad for her. She truly wants to do this math, but truly lacks a certain level of understanding. Maybe school will have better luck teaching her this Fall. Apparently, having two parents who are CPAs and teach accounting for a living isn't sufficient.

Other Abbie-isms: She informed me last night that I look like I swallowed soccer ball. Thanks honey! :) See below for the "soccer ball" in question. For those of you who are wondering, this is a 31 week "soccer ball."

Life with Abbie

Natural History Museum - Today we went to the Natural History Museum. Abbie has been talking about seeing dinosaur bones for the last week or so. I think she liked it, but we will need to go back at the end of the month when a new dinosaur exhibit opens up and there are even more bones on display.


Baby talk - Abbie has had a couple of ideas about the baby lately. Last night at dinner she informed me that it might be a good idea if we used a jackhammer to drill a hole in my stomach that the baby can get out through. Yikes.

Also, she recently said to me, "Mama, I'm not going to feel left out when you are working with the baby." "No, why not?" I said. She replied, "Because I'll always be helping. I can feed the baby, burp the baby, and change diapers." Sounds good to me.

Personality - Abbie always likes to pretend that she is an animal, or a witch, or a character from a book. This morning Abbie said to me, "I was having trouble being a person, so Merlin used his magic to turn me into a spider. He took away my personality and gave me spiderality." Too funny. I had never thought of personality as person-ality. Apparently, she thinks of it differently, hence "spider-ality".

Kids say the darndest things

Abbie has been in really good mood lately and has been lots of fun. Yesterday, when we picked her up at school, we found the following item posted in the logbook:

Basically, they asked each kid to say what they thought a leprechaun is and then they recorded each kid's response. Many of the responses are pretty funny. For example, one of the girls thought that it is a quiet hamster. The thing that stuck out for us is that all but two of the kids gave little two word answers. However, Roan and Abbie, apparently the storytellers in the class, gave these big elaborate answers. Clicking on the photo will enlarge it. However, in case it isn't legible, Abbie's guess was "A big machine that does experiments that will turn your house into a bottle that you put baking soda and water in and it will explode and make a big mess." You would think that we had been making volcanoes at home or something, but we haven't been, so I have no idea where she came up with this.

As for the other kid, Abbie's little sister, all seems to be going well. This is week 27. I feel huge and have no idea where the remaining ten pounds will go, but other than that, she and I seem to be doing OK. Right now we are still trying to decide on a name and are trying to figure out what we are going to do for childcare. Anyone who knows an excellent nanny who is willing to work for free, please send her our way. Thanks!