Extra-Trip-Ular Activities

When Lovely MIL and Step-Dad arrived here this past summer, he was fascinated by *everything*: the flora and fauna, the houses, even the electrical lines (he used to work for the phone company). We got a barrage of questions:

Where’s the tank on the toilet?
*shrug*

Is that leaf lettuce [growing in the field along the Autobahn]?
*shrug, a little self-consciously*

After that, he was more likely to just ask himself—“I wonder...?”—because he’d obviously figured out that we are complete dummies about stuff like where food comes from and how things work.


During the trip we all made to Rothenburg, Darling Daughter wanted to play Hangman. She cheated a little against Gwamma, using the name of our village (Ziegelhausen) as her first word. Her next clue was “Dirty Frenchman.” (I still have the pages.) Turns out she was making a reference to the Disney film Atlantis, not harboring anti-French sentiment.

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D.D. hasn’t lost a tooth in over a year (since the first grade), so she was pretty stoked to discover a loose canine last night. She was certain it was going to fall out, like, *today*, so I had to remind her that her other teeth took weeks to get loose enough to come out. She may find her tooth-loot in her xmas stocking.

She has recently learned how to blow (gum) bubbles; I heard “psss...pop!” over and over and over this weekend until she ran out of gum.

On the way to school this morning, she was planning out with whom (1) she would share her fabulous news about the loose tooth and the fact that she slept in her Barbie tent last night. I folded up our puffiest comforter under her sleeping bag, and she says she slept great, roughin’ it in the dining room.
(1) All the girls and none of the boys.

She’s growing up so fast. The top of her head reaches my shoulder now. I keep threatening to put a brick on her head to make her stop growing, to which she replies with a very teenager-y “Mo-om!” She told me that I can still call her Noodle Doodle, Punkin’ Pie, etc., but not in front of her friends. Fair enough!