Piper and I were reading a book last night in which a little girl cut her own hair.
“I would never do that, Mommy,” Piper promised.
“That’s good to hear,” I said. “People who cut hair have special training so they know how to do it.”
“Anna said her mom cuts her hair.”
“Well, maybe she has special training.”
“I don’t think so,” Piper said. “It doesn’t look so good. My teacher said Anna should go to a barbecue next time instead.”
Did you know Pluto is no longer considered a planet? Pluto didn’t actually change much. It’s still a bit of a dwarf. The definition of ‘planet’ simply changed to exclude the poor dwarf. I smell a conspiracy.
Anyway, Piper has been learning about the planets. The planet number controversy didn’t interest her at all. Her planet isn’t a dwarf. It’s paper maiche. Or paper machete, as she calls it. Arts and crafts can be a dangerous business.
Her homework today was to paint her planet. Here is a before shot:
She named her planet Rosy.
It’s a planet of rainbow flowers, of course.
Last week on vacation Piper and I spent a lot of time at a local children’s museum. On a rainy day, it was exactly what we needed. (In case you’re ever in Harrisonburg, Virginia, here it is: http://www.iexploremore.com/cms/Home/tabid/36/Default.aspx. I highly recommend it.)
Nobody does a children’s museum like Piper. There isn’t a toy she won’t play with. Upon arrival, she runs around touching and examining everything until she decides on the one spot where she will spend the next six hours. This time it was the kitchen.
“It’s just like a real kitchen!” Piper exclaimed.
And it was. A life size refrigerator, full cabinets, a dishwasher, table for serving, and laundry facilities within an arm’s reach. What more could a domestic goddess desire? The fruit and vegetable market was just a short walk from your fake front porch. It was all pretty darn cute. It gave me a terrible itch. The last thing I want to do on my vacation is spend a day trapped in a pretend kitchen “cooking” and “cleaning.”
“You can do the laundry! Just like at home. You’re ALWAYS doing laundry there. Now you can do it here,” Piper said. “Won’t that be fun?”
I gritted my teeth and assessed my chores.
Then I began my work, just like at home. I take my linens seriously.
Then Piper discovered unchartered territory. “What’s this?” she asked, sizing up a tiny ironing board. I hesitated. She’s so young. Why force her to grow up so soon?
“It’s an ironing board,” I said. “You use the iron to take the wrinkles out of the clothes.”
Piper’s eyes were huge. I’m proud to say she’s never seen me iron. She moved so fast in her excitement I could hardly get a picture. She grabbed the pile of linens I had carefully folded and began “ironering” out their wrinkles.
“My tutu won’t need ironering, though,” Piper said. “It’s already perfect.”
We took Piper hiking in the Shenandoah Valley yesterday. It was her first hike. She wasn’t that excited. “So, you just go walk around in the woods? Boring.” She complained in the car most of the drive up the mountain. I let her wear her tutu and bring her favorite stuffed animal. These are essential components for forest exploration.
Piper’s dad gave a brief lecture on poison ivy. This led to her favorite new game called “Is this poison ivy?” in which she touched every leaf in the woods and asked…you guessed it: “Is this poison ivy?” Half of the hike went like this.
“Is this poison ivy?”
“No. Put that down.”
“How about this? Poison ivy?”
“I hope not, especially since you just rubbed it all over your cheek.”
“Hey. Look at this leaf. Is it poison ivy? Huh?
“Stop!”
Luckily, Sissy pulled Piper close to enjoy the view.
Then they explored flora and fauna together by poking unknown things with sticks.
Piper took a brief tumble on the steep part of the trail. I cleaned up her wounds the best I could and she said, “Mommy, you make everything better.”
At the end of our hike, Piper declared it a moderate success. She agreed to do it again anyway. “I liked the hiking part,” she said, as we emerged from the woods, “just not the falling down part.”
Piper is pretty proud of learning to write her name. It’s taken a tough six months of preschool. I wrote about how we almost changed her name just to avoid the name writing pressure in “A Piper by Any Other Name.” Today, she’s a name writing rockstar. She labels everything she can with her mark. Tonight at dinner, on the back of several sushi ordering sheets, she moved on to more challenging name writing.
“Mom, how do you spell ‘mom’?”
“M-O-M.”
Piper wrote W-O-W.
“Oops,” I said. “Those look like “W’s.” You wrote ‘Wow.”
“Well, that’s cool,” Piper said. I agreed. Then she wrote M-O-M.
“Do you have another name, Mom?”
“I do. It’s Melissa.”
“Whoa. How do you spell that?”
“M-E-L-”
“Slow down, please. I only have one hand.” I bit my tongue not to point out that in fact a Piper has two. She wrote M-E-L.
“Okay. What’s next?”
“I-”
“Like the ‘I’ in my name?” Piper asked.
“Yes. Same ‘I.”
“What’s next?”
“S-S-A”
“Oops. I wrote 5s instead of ‘S’.” This made Piper giggle. Combining letters and numbers is hilarious business.
“That’s okay. You can just write over the 5s. They’re pretty close to ‘S.'”
“It’s too much trouble,” Piper said. “You’ll just have to spell your name with 5s.”
That makes sense. Like mother, like daughter.
I know what you’ve been thinking. As much as the Piper loves all things rainbow, I’ve been neglecting one very important accessory.
You’ve heard from Sissy in “A Rainbow of Fruit Flavors” about Piper’s love of rainbow dresses.
You know that Piper’s parachute would be rainbow colored.
You may even remember, dear reader, that Sissy wanted to name Piper after a rainbow. Refresh yourself in “What’s in a Name? Guts.”
And don’t forget Piper’s plethora of rainbow tutus in “When in Doubt, Tutu.”
In fact, just for fun, I typed in “rainbow” in the little search engine at the top of the blog to see how many times I’ve written about Piper’s obsession with all things rainbow. It’s too embarrassing to reveal. You’ll just have to do it yourself.
But still, something was missing, wasn’t?
You’ll probably sleep better tonight knowing that the rainbow sunglasses have been procured. Whew.
Piper wants a teddy bear. Not just any teddy bear will do. It has to be a Build-A-Bear and it has to grow from birth. Piper’s birthday is coming up. A teddy bear is entirely possible, but I fear she has something more complicated in mind.
“My bear is being born right now,” she whispered to me at nap time. “He’s three minutes old.”
“Really? How do you know?”
Piper rolls her eyes at my question. “I’m his mother. His Build-A-Bear mother. I know.”
“So your Build-A-Bear is growing right now?” I’m actually trying to follow her logic. There may be a real question in there somewhere that I need to address.
“Only if I buy him will he actually be built and grown. It’s like a daughter. Like you grew me. With a computer.”
“I didn’t pick you out on a computer, P. I grew you in my body,” I explain.
“Right. But you chose me. I remember.”
“You remember?”
“Yes. I was on the shelf waiting to be born. Then you came in and chose me. It was exactly like at Build-A-Bear.”
Hmm. I remember it a bit differently, but I’m pretty sure arguing will be futile.
A Piper is observant. She goes through the day like Yoda sprinkling her wisdom.
After a nature walk and scavenger hunt this afternoon, we stopped for ice cream. Piper slurped up her melting cup and turned her attention to my cone.
“Can I have a bite of your cone, Mommy?”
I had been licking down the chocolate chip ice cream to the perfect cone bite. You know the one. I handed it over. Piper happily crunched the cake cone. She watched me get the next bite ready.
“Here. You can have my cup,” Piper volunteered. “I’ll finish your cone.”
I looked at the melted vanilla mess.
“It tastes better when you share,” Piper assured me. It didn’t. But watching her on a summer day eating ice cream may have been worth it.
After ice cream, Piper went swimming. Then she came home to a bath and dinner. While she was soaking the chlorine out, I leaned over the tub and Piper traced my face with her pruned fingers. “You know how come I know you’re my mom?” she asked.
“Because I’m bathing you and making your favorite ravioli for dinner?” I guessed.
“No. You have those lines on your face and those dark things under your eyes. All moms have those. That’s how I know you’re mine.”
We spent yesterday at a water park. It was Piper’s first. She had no fear. I kind of wish she’d had a tiny bit. Piper ran to the top of every slide and plunged herself down each tube with no idea of what would meet her at the bottom. She ran under waterfalls and laughed when she fell out of the float on the lazy river. There was no stopping her courage. It was terrifying. I’ve never been more proud.
Piper has been a little reluctant about the whole swimming thing. She’s wanted a float, water wings, and a life jacket. She’s taken swimming lessons and told me that “they just didn’t work.” All that changed yesterday afternoon. Sissy and Piper went into the three foot pool together to “work on” the swimming thing. Piper forgot her reluctance and just took off kicking. And just like that we have a swimmer. Within ten minutes she was diving to the bottom of the pool and racing her sister in laps. Sissy swims like a fish, but Piper wasn’t far behind.
To celebrate, they shared a chocolate milkshake.
Piper showed her true strength and beat her Sissy to the bottom of the cup.
We’re on vacation this week. Piper spent an awesome day binging on pizza, splashing in the pool, playing board games with cousins, being doted on by grandparents, and playing at a park. Three minutes after we’d returned to our room, she began complaining, “I’m so bored! We never have any fun! No one plays with me!”
Poor thing.
Cousin Tay saved the day and jumped in to read Piper stories. But it’s never as simple as reading a book out loud with a Piper. There are questions. Many questions. Each plot twist must be dissected. What ifs abound. Characters have to renamed. You can hardly get through a sentence without commentary. Cousin Tay was patient. She met each of Piper’s demands. As I was putting Piper to bed later she said, “Tay is the best reader in the world. She gets me.”
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