Max

Abi: I'm a little afraid of Max.
Josh: Why?
Abi: He's always chasing me in school.
Josh: Really?
Abi: Yeah. He tries to chase me and kiss me. Eww.
Josh: He tries to kiss you?
Abi: Yeah. And sometimes he gets other people to help him chase me.
Josh: Does anyone else in your class try to chase people and kiss them?
Abi: I don't know. I don't think so.
Mira: Are you friends with Max? Do you ever play with him?
Abi: No, he just chases me and tries to kiss me. And sometimes I kiss him back!

Poetry

THE MORNING SONG
=================
Oh! When I woke up I sat in my room.
Oh! When I woke up I sang a tune.
Oh! When I woke up I was looking at the moon.
Oh! When I woke up I smiled!


THE HANDSOME SONG
===================
Chapter 1: OSE
What a handsome pose!
What a handsome rose!
What handsome toes!
What a handsome nose!


Chapter 2: OON OOM
What a handsome room!
What a handsome tune!
What a handsome broom!
What a handsome moooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo-ooon!
THE END


THE RHYME POEM
===============
Mouse in a house
Books on hooks
Silk in milk
The moon is soon
Twos in shoes
One on a thumb
I love you

The spellchecker

Abi, on seeing Gmail's spellchecker tag the word "Shabbat":

"Mama, I think our computer isn't Jewish!"

What I did today -- by Abi (with mama's help)

Today in the morning I woke up, got dressed, and did everything I needed to. I didn't go to school because I was sick yesterday and we wanted to make sure that I wan't sick any more.

I went downstairs and worked on a math problem with mama. There is a dot in one corner and there is a dot in the other corner and you need to find out how many ways you can get from one corner to the other one. The answer was 10.

I also made a paper grid for Battleship for me and Galya. You take two pieces of paper, a crayon, and a ruler. On each paper, I needed to draw two big squares. Inside the squares, I needed to draw ten lines down and ten lines across. I had to put Russian letters on the side and on the top I needed to put numbers from 1 to 10. I hid these grids under the papers on my table, so Galya would be surprised.

Then Galya came and asked me "Did you eat anything?", and I said "No". Then I asked, "Did you bring any omelette today?", and Galya said, "Yes!"

So we ate some omelette and then we played Set. I also made a little concert, then we went outside and I found lots of things, like sparkles. We went to the park and there I saw my friend Sophia, and we played tag with her friend Henry. I wasn't running or catching. I was the base and I was on Sophia's team, and I was trying to make it so Henry couldn't get to the base.

I fell down on the right side of the sandbox and hurt my knee, but I didn't cry. Henry fell down too. Then Henry's father asked Sophia, "Did you fall down?" and she said no.

Then it was time to go. On the way out of the park, we saw mama riding her bike home. She was thinking, "Are they home yet or not?" And then I saw Sophia walking home and I ran to her, and we went in my driveway and picked some blueberries for her. I asked her, "Do you want one of my sparkles?" and she picked a purple one. Then we picked some more blueberries. She asked, "Can I pick one of those flowers?", and I said yes. Then I asked, "Do you want to have another sparkle? Can you please pick a pink one, because the pink ones are most of all, and I want to keep the ones that are not most of all." And she did. And that's not the end. Galya already left, and then Sophia left. She said, "I'm going to see you tomorrow at the playground, don't worry".

The end.

Snails and snakes

There is a snail in Abi's aquarium -- we're not sure how he got there, but we've been watching him grow for about month now. Recently things have gotten even more exciting: there are three new baby snails in the aquarium. (We were wondering how that was possible with just one snail, but our friend Ben, an expert on snails, tells us that snails can do that.)

This morning, looking at the adult snail, Abi said in a worried voice: "I don't think he's as big as he used to be." She thought a little and added, "I think he's getting old". Why do you say that? "Because I know you get smaller when you get old."

Meanwhile, my mother just adopted a California King Snake (it belongs to a friend of my brother's who is going abroad for a year). A few days ago, Abi and I saw it for the first time -- a gorgeous creature. When the snake wasn't moving, Abi looked at it curiously. But when it moved, Abi's look changed to pure rapture, and she said with utter certainty, "Instead of an aquarium, I want a snake." It really was love at first sight. Interestingly, the snake behaved differently with Abi than with anyone else: several times it lunged at her through the glass (as it would at prey or perhaps an enemy). My guess is that Abi moves more rapidly and frenetically than the grown-ups, and the snake gets agitated from it. Based on that, I'm not sure we're ready for a snake just yet...

Girls

When I picked up Abi from preschool today, the teacher made us have a moms-and-daughters conference, together with Miranda and Eden and their moms. Apparently there's somegthing complicated going on with the three girls, with presents selectively given, "prizes" promised and withheld, sometimes leading to tears. From now on, this is not allowed (though identical presents for everyone in the class are still fine.) This was occasioned by Abi bringing presents for all the girls today. (I had suggested inluding the other two girls, Maya and Romi, and Abi was very happy to do it.) That's not allowed either.

For my part, all I previously knew of this was that Abi would sometimes say "I promised Eden/Miranda to give her X" (and, indeed, would take X to school and give it); or, more rarely, "Miranda has promised me a prize" (though Abi has never brought home a present or prize as far as I know). So it seems that Abi is always the giver. It is genuine generosity -- she is prepared to give away some of her favorite toys -- but it's been bothering me. Someone was being manipulated, and I'm not sure who: almost certainly Abi (Eden sometimes refuses to talk to her and drags Miranda into it too; perhaps Abi was trying to appease them), but possibly the others too (giving presents is definitely a kind of power trip -- "I gave you a present, so now you have to like me"). I'm glad it's over, but it's hard for me to explain to Abi exactly what was wrong.

Interestingly, something similar happened last year too, at the Russian daycare. There, it was just Abi bringing presents, and the teacher forbade it because she felt Abi was being taken advantage of. There were much fewer presents this year (which I why I hadn't realized anything was wrong), but I guess as the kids get more sophisticated, they can make more of less. We'll have to keep an eye out for this kind of thing in the future.

Death

Abi's preschool is next to a funeral home, but Abi has been oblivious to that until now. This morning we saw them loading huge flower arrangements into the hearse, and she asked what that was for. I explained to her what a funeral was.

-- So all my friends will come to my funeral when I die?
-- Yes.
-- And all your friends will come to yours when you die?
-- Yes.
-- Will I be there?
-- I hope so.
-- And papa?
-- Yes.
-- Well, unless he dies first.

All this without the smallest sign of worry or unhappiness.

Boys (already)

Abi wants to marry Shai (a kid from her class) and the feeling is mutual. Shai is going to the same school next year, so we'll see how this progresses. :)

I personally dislike talk of marriage among young kids, because I fear it may make regular cross-gender friendships more difficult. But Abi certainly has other boys that she's friends with, both in school and out, so maybe I'm wrongto worry. In fact, the mother of another classmate, Gideon, told me recently that Gideon says Abi is the only girl in their class who regularly plays with the boys.

Follow-up to previous post:

Yesterday Abi informed me, out of the blue, that she thinks "Zero is a ten too". I asked why, but she couldn't explain. I told her she was right, and asked how many tens zero was? She said "Zero". And how many threes? Also zero. She got the point.

Even and odd

Abi likes to annoy grown-ups by playing "the opposite game", where everything she says is the opposite of what she means. Once, a few months ago, the possibility somehow came up of playing the "opposite opposite" game; we figured out that in this game, everything you said was true. What about the "opposite opposite opposite" game? How about 4 opposites, or 5, or 6? Soon the games were referred to by their numbers: "I'm playing the seven game". Then Abi had a revelation: "It alternates -- opposite, non-opposite, opposite, non-opposite." And then another: "All the numbers that end in 1,3,5,7,9 work one way, and the ones that end in 2,4,6,8,0 work another way." We had already told her about even and odd numbers at some point, but I don't remember if she figured out this connection herself or if I pointed it out to her. In any case, she got very adept at telling what kind of game a given number corresponded to. She also picked her favorite two games to play: when she wanted to play the opposite game, she said she was playing 69 (=34+35, the sum of her parents' ages). When she wanted to play the truth game, she said she was playing 74 (= 34+35+5). From all of this, she definitely got the idea that even and odd matter (though she doesn't quite remember the names yet, in English or Russian: she just says "numbers that you can divide in half").

Last night, Josh and Abi were counting by 3's. This morning, Abi told me she had figured out something very interesting: 3,6,9 is like 30,60,90. "In what sense?" I asked. She had a little trouble expressing it, but finally explained that 30,60,90 are the first "tens" (des'atki -- the conversation was in Russian) that occur when you count by 3's, and they're the same as the first numbers that occur. I asked what the next few "tens" would be, and she told me: 120, 150. Then I asked if the same thing would work with counting by 7's, but she said that was too hard: let's try counting by 4's. At first she conjectured that the first "ten" would be 40, but I told her to try, and she figured out it was actually 20. At that point, she seemed quite sure that if you counted by 5's, the first "ten" would be 50. When she realized it wasn't, she said she had thought it had to do with evens and odds, but apparently not.

(At that point she was sick of the conversation: she likes doing math a little at a time, but tires of it quickly, and we never push.)

Second opinions

Abi always likes to get a second opinion about any question that interests her. When she asks for the second time, she doesn't say that she already knows the answer; but if the second answer contradicts the first, she challenges it, and if it omits something from the first, she tries to extend it.
Some recent examples:

• How does the baby come out of the mother's belly? (She recently asked me this, and I think it was for the second time, because she ascertained that men have only one passage and women have two. I hadn't said this explicitly.)
• Why has there not been a war on American territory in a very long time? (I told her it was because America was very strong, which in turn is because it has had a good government for the last two centuries. That seemed like a more interesting answer than the standard one about being far from everywhere else, but she said, "That's not what I heard" and proceeded to tell me the standard story herself.)
• Why is the rainbow flag so common in Provincetown? (She asked me first and listened attentively to the answer; I heard her questioning Josh about it the next day.)

Collaborative Stories

Recently Abi has been into telling collaborative stories, where each person gets to contribute one paragraph at a time. Generally the adult(s) keep trying to establish some semblance of plot cohesion, whereas Abi, on each turn, introduces enough chaos to keep it interesting. Some
recent examples:

===================

Mira: Once upon a time there lived a king who loved only gold. His treasury was full of gold, but he still wanted more more more. (Elaboration on this theme.)

Abi: And he had a daughter, a princess, and what she wanted most of all was to fly in a rocket around the earth. Your turn.

The story continues, with Mira desperately trying to tie the two strands together. The princess saw from her rocket what desolation her father's greed had produced in his kingdom, and tried to convince her father to come with her in the rocket to look for himself.

Abi: And he said,"OK". Your turn.

Mira: Oh, come on, he didn't just say OK! He's only interested in money, remember? He's not interested in rockets -- he probably asked her for something in exchange.

Abi: OK, the king said, "I will come with you if you bring me the most beautiful painting in the world..."

Mira: "... because I heard that some artist has painted the most beautiful painting, and I want to get it and sell it and get lots of gold for it."

The rest of the story is mostly by Mira, as Abi gets caught up in it. The painter doesn't give the princess his painting, but paints a new one for her. (Abi -- the king riding on a unicorn through a beautiful meadow full of flowers; Mira -- but behind him the earth is dry and desolate, with gold coins flying out of it into the king's hand.) All the experts concur that now this is the most beautiful painting in the world, so the princess brings it to the king, he goes on the rocket, and realizes the error of his ways. The princess marries the artist and they live happily ever after, with her taking him up in the rocket and him painting what he sees from there. The end.

============================================

This story was told late at night with our friends Allan and Rebecca. Because of the late hour, it was agreed that there would be only one round, and each person's turn would be only one or two sentences. Abi wanted to go last.

Allan: One day Abi woke up to find that she had butterfly wings and a pair of antennae.

Rebecca: She spent the next few days enjoying her wings, but then she figured out that the antennae were even cooler.

Josh: Wherever she went she could get radio reception, so she could hear news and music and her favorite Red Sox games.

Mira: After a while though, the wings started getting in the way, so she went to her friend, a magician named Rebecca, and asked her to take away the wings and antennae.

Abi: And the magician couldn't. (Much merriment ensues on the part of the grown-ups, which perhaps prompts Abi to continue.) And Abi decided that she actually liked her wings after all. The end.