The book was better

Ruby is sleeping much better. ****KNOCK ON WOOD**** She usually sleeps for at least an hour and a half for two of her naps and then a 30 minute nap for her last nap. Not perfect but so, so much better. Not surprisingly, with better sleep, has come more mobility. She can sit up on her own. I actually missed this the first time. We had been in the kitchen and I was cooking and she was in her high chair. Then I took her in the living room and laid her down on her tummy and went back and got my water. In the 10 seconds it took me to get back, she was sitting up. But she did it again today and I saw it this time. Stinker. She did the same thing the first time she rolled over.

She doesn't do the traditional crawl yet but a worm thing. And man she can get around. And she gets into everything. She keeps trying to sneak up on Maggie but she's not quite there yet. But you can't put her down and do other stuff anymore. You have to have eyes on her unless she is contained. I have a feeling she's going to be into everything and I'll be chasing her constantly.

Here she is in her Daddy's hat.

I love that she sucks these fingers. So sweet. Also, definitely not tired.

My little koala!

Maggie found this little notebook. Grandpa was pestering her so she wrote, Grandpa is a little bit annoying. She told me he's saying blah, blah, blah in the picture. Oh children.

Here's Ruby DESTROYING a banana pancake I made for her.

I forgot to mention a couple of things in my school post. Maggie's been working from a notebook. Every evening I write out a list of everything she needs to do the next day. So, her morning list, chores, meals, school work, classes. She goes through it a bit slowly so I think I'm going to let her earn 30 minutes of screen time for every five things she gets done, if she does them within a certain time frame. So, say 10 minutes to brush teeth, brush hair, and get dressed. Otherwise, my God, she will do everything with a slowness you might not have believed was possible.

I've also given her a daily chore we call 5/5. She has to find five things that leave the house: either to be donated, recycled, or thrown away. Then she has to find five things that she will take from downstairs and put them in her room. Oh, what a difference it has made. Her stuff is still EVERYWHERE but less everywhere.

A couple of weeks ago we were watching an American Girl movie for movie night. In the movie, the girls and her family go to France (kind of ironic). Well about half way through Ruby woke up and I had to go upstairs. Then Maggie comes running up and tells me, Mom, I can speak Franch. I got her to go back downstairs and came down a couple of minutes later. I asked her to tell me something in French and she said, Zis iz ze bezt! She's bilingual!

I had told her once about an app that can translate signs. You hold your phone up to the sign and in your phone it will be in English. So she said, Mom when we go to France, we won't need that app. :)

She's continued drawing pictures while we read and it's awesome. It's actually a widely used way to torture kids while they are trying to enjoy a book. But I never have quizzed her or made her do anything so she can actually listen and enjoy the story without PROVING she heard every single word. I think it's funny she decided on her own to do it. And she gets so many details from the reading. The funny thing is that she usually continues drawing long after we've stopped reading and then it really becomes interesting. Did you know there were fairies that lived in the barn in Charlotte's Web? And aliens that say, We come in peace? Well, now you do.

We got The Witches by Roald Dahl on audiobook for the car. She loved it. She actually begged to stay in the car so she could listen to the end of a chapter. And she would laugh so hard and I would hear her upstairs playing and saying, Dogs droppings (the witches say it over and over in this ridiculous German-ish accent because that's what children smell like to them).

Anyway, we actually own that movie. I can't remember how we got it but she's never watched it because the first scene is a small girl getting snatched and murdered. So, yeah. . . But after she loved the book so much we tried again. In the story, two boys get turned into mice. Maggie turned off the movie before it was completely done and her Dad and I asked, wait how to the boys get turned back into boys, and she said, they don't. We both were incredulous so I looked it up and in the movie they get turned back into boys. And I told her what happened and she said, I don't remember that in the book. And, thankfully, I looked up the book AND SHE WAS RIGHT. They stay mice in the book and the main boy is happy about it since his parents are dead and he won't outlive his grandmother who is raising him (which, Jesus, are you effing kidding me? these are children's books!). She can now proudly say, I liked the book better, and, that's not how it happened in the book. I'm so proud.