Baptism!

She's serious about her covenants.  It's very humbling to see.

Reading

M is a super reader this year.  I recently gave her "The Penderwicks of Gardam Street" and she's been busily reading it ever since.  It's so cool to be able to share books with kids.  And music too. 

We give books as birthday presents whenever there is a need.  So we went to Barnes and Nobel today.  M saw some cute little reading time trackers and asked what they were.  I told her that they were for kids that needed to be motivated to read.

Reading

In less than 2 years M has gone from barely reading to reading faster than I do with excellent recall.  Tonight I asked her to read a book silently.  I read along and she finished every page before I did.  Then I surprised her and asked the animal each character brought to the pet show.  She knew all of them.  And her eyes were shining like "Ask me another question!"  She's 7.

Today at the library she picked up the entire wimpy kids series and read them 3 of them in as many hours.

Piano piano piano

M does some amazing things on the piano.  She took the song she learned in her book and transposed it into 3 other keys.  This song has a right hand melody with 1 and 5 chords played rhythmically in the left.  She taught herself to play "Sweet Hour of Prayer" out of the Simplified Hymn Book (not Hymns made Easy).  That song has Soprano and Alto parts with 1 voice in the bass clef. 

I don't know how she does this. 

She just grins and says she is using her ears and her music reading powers.

It really is wonderful for her to have this creative outlet.  She's learning to think in so many directions.  It's great.

criming while 7

B was asleep so I asked M to get some bread from the bakery thrift store.  It's a 1 room store and you park right in front of the store.  So I parked and could see her through the front doors.  I'm a little picky about the bread so I asked her to bring them to the door so I could give her a thumbs up or down.  She brought by a few loaves.  I wondered why she had no idea what kind of bread we buy.  But usually she spends the whole time in the store trying to convince me that we need to buy some sugary snack cakes. 
  So finally she brings a bag that looks like what I want, but I'm not sure.  I give a thumbs up, then a thumbs down and she walks out of the store to give me a better look.  So I dash out of the car and tell her not to shoplift.  Then I leave the kids in the car, to look myself.  There is none of the kind I want so I gave her a loaf of the least yucky kind.  Then I dash out to the car, 10 feet away.  M finishes buying the bread.  We live happily ever after.

I wouldn't let that happen!

M loves grapefruit.  Our neighbor gave us a grocer bag full from her trees.  She also gave us a pomelo.  We peeled it carefully to make a funny hat.  M set to eating it very happily.  She wanted me to come help saying "I can't eat the whole thing myself!" 

I replied "You don't have to."

And she exclaimed "And let it go to waste!?  I won't let that happen."

I let her know that she could save some for another day.  Phew!

helper

I'm not sure what triggered it.  Last night M wiped down the table and cleaned out the car.  Then she contrived with P to make breakfast for us and let me sleep this morning.  What a sweet girl. 

We've also been having fun with a program called Mario Paint Composer.  It lets you write music onto a staff with sounds from the Mario games.  It's pretty awesome.  M loves writing her own crazy stuff.  She's also willing to write out her Suzuki music with crazy sounds.

M also loves this halloween sweater my neighbor gave me.  I love it too.  And I love her so much.