Little Monkey

Last week my girl and I were singing when she very clearly signed 'tree' and then 'leaf'.  Mother of the year, I had no idea what she wanted & couldn't think of any tree songs she might've picked up at school.  She kept signing them over & over and got increasingly pouty when my guesses fell short.  I'll admit I was wondering a bit - other than in Signing Times, landscaping items don't come up too often in our daily conversations (as anyone can see from my backyard).  What else could she be signing?  On Friday her teachers ran through a couple options and suggested the monkey song.  She looked SO relieved and happy when I asked if that was the tree song.  Jeez, mom, try to keep up!

My monkeys were always jumping on the bed but I guess this is the school of realpolitik:
5 little monkeys, swinging in the tree
Teasing Mr. Crocodile, "Can't catch me!"
Along comes Mr. Crocodile, quiet as can be, and
Snatches! that monkey right out of that tree!
4 little monkeys...

Did anyone else notice there are no LEAVES in this song?  I don't know if they covered this at school, but that is a huge leap, understanding that leaves & trees are part of the same thing. 

Her signing is taking off... she's recently picked up pig, frog (which admittedly looks a lot like 'pig'), bear, mouse, bird, hot, cracker (the last just now because we hardly ever had any in the house-but she learned immediately & with great enthusiasm once given a graham cracker the opportunity), socks, ape (but, oddly, not monkey), and she's pointing to a whole bunch of new body parts.  I still haven't figured out a name sign for her brother though.  I know there is a lot of protocol & sensitivity around the name sign issue but I've exhausted my available resources - Google, Julia, and Matt's one cousin who I've met twice and who hopefully just didn't know who I was so ignored me, or who I heartily offended with my presumptive demanding email.  But she needs to call her brother something and is nowhere near finger spelling yet.  We've been playing around with it a bit but nothing's clicked - in case anyone asks, however, it will be an "adaptive sign" (only).  Tricky business.

Pictures from our singing signing session Tuesday morning:

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

MORE songs!

Bonus Mommy Love Picture

Frog?  Pig?  Frig?  Prog?
Old MacDonald, as a Mad Scientist

Bear, adapted.
Or:  Old MacDonald's Farm expands into zoo animals.

Keeping time! 
(Actually I have no idea, but it looks snappy!) 

BOOM

Speaking of first world problems and lack of sleep... it's well past 9 o'clock right now.  I worked late, granted, but I should be going to bed right now, maybe even after 22 minutes of the Daily Show, but instead I'm going to post some exceeding blurry pictures from the Fourth, go running, and try to figure out who is getting how much of my paycheck on Friday.  Probably while I have the TV on, so I might get sucked into an hour long show instead of Jon's 22 minutes of sanity & light.  Assuming I get up in time, I might get about 5 hours of sleep.  Which I can manage for a day or two but then what?  The ONLY soft part of my day is bedtime - surely there is a magic formula that I can use to balance my various "me activities" & house stuff (including the neverending ohmygoodnessWHEREdoesitcomefrom? laundry) with just enough sleep so I don't get whiny and grouchy?  First world problems indeed - At least I'm not washing the laundry by hand in the creek, right? 

Anywhoodle - we had a blast on Monday.  SO MUCH FOOD.  So much food all weekend - mango salad with cilantro lime dressing (a new favorite), gazpacho, grilled salmon, fajitas, cherries, strawberry & blueberry pancakes (so patriotic!), BBQ on Monday and pasta with homemade pesto...  guacamole, hummus, more guacamole... We had 7 grown ups over for dinner on Monday and enough food for 20.  Nevermind all the yummy leftovers from various other meals.  I'm halfway tempted to make a comment about how we celebrated America's independence by gross American excess but this is the bright stuff of life - friends, family, celebrations.  Love it! 

[This also by way of explanation for why I'm going running tonight, regardless of the time - let's all hope my knees don't collapse under the weight of all those avocados]

And y'all might love it along with me if I knew how to take a picture at night.  My neighborhood has not yet fallen victim to the evil that is Big Brother preventing us from shooting our eyes out and setting our neighbors' roofs on fire.  MULTIPLE neighbors appear to spend serious coin on professional level displays so we lined up our chairs, sprayed on the bug spray and dreamed of the day we could keep up with the Joneses.  Though we tried - oh, we tried! 

What are you planning on landing there?

Cuteness!



Not pointing out the obvious here.
Because I'm not 14 anymore.
*giggle* 





Terrible!  But I am documenting the sparklers for posterity,  
 in case Big Brother wins. 

Edited to add:  Am obviously (hopefully obviously) joking about Big Brother on this, the most patriotic of holidays.  What the various sides chose to go Big Brother over is a neverending mystery - marriage or motorcycle helmets?  Which is more restrictive and intrusive and has less effect on others?  What people do in the privacy of their own bedroom, or the goofballs who want to feel the breeze in their hair and end up in a coma in the hospital on the state's dime after trying unsuccessfully to swerve around a semi truck at 85mph?  And then sue the semi truck?  Nope - No opinions here.  Happy 4th of July! 

Also:  I got 6 hours of sleep. Bonus hour!