In which Erica loses at the game of Simon Says

ETA: turns out I am not only a Simon Says loser, I am also kind of an idiot. Story corrected. Thanks JCC :)

Yesterday, we played Simon Says. Nothing thrills a three year old more than the power to boss her mother around, so we played this a lot. I am actually pretty good at Simon Says. But I was trying to cook dinner and tend to a teething (and therefore cranky) Charlotte. So Elisabeth said this: "Simon says .... jump up and down!" So I start jumping. With Charlotte. For like 30 seconds. I said, "Simon needs to give more directions because I'm not going to keep doing this forever." Elisabeth, in all of her mercy, said, "Simon says stop jumping." Then she quickly followed that up with "Keep doing what you're doing." (Note: I removed the "Simon says...") And I stood there stirring the beef stew. And she cackled. "YOU LOST!" Little (cute, adorable, sneaky) turd.

We've had a very dull week filled will more (!!) illness in the house. Elisabeth and Doug are both sick. Doug is sicker than I've seen him in awhile, with things like body aches and a very stuffy nose. Elisabeth is the sickest I've seen her with a fever (for 6 days now) and a wicked cough. This means we've done a lot of forced rest and fluids. I don't know how you make a three year old rest other than video crack - so she's been watching a lot of shows. It is interesting to see that she actually does have a breaking point where she doesn't want to watch any more tv. I'm thankful for this, because I'm not sure I have such a breaking point. So clearly she got some good genes from Doug. I have to force myself to turn off the tv and do productive things.

Yesterday, during one of her breaks from shows, we did some "worksheets" in a little phonics workbook that we have. The exercise goes like this: there is a picture on the left, then a three letter word on the right. But the first letter of the three letter word is missing and the kid is supposed to fill it in. An example: a picture of a man followed by ___ A N. The kid is supposed to write M.

Elisabeth is an expert at this game, quickly going through 15 of them. She got to the 16th, though, and was confused. It was a picture of a hen, with ____ E N. She said, "but mommy, I don't know how to write "chick." Made me laugh. Her letters aren't perfectly formed, but they're worlds better than her numbers which are mostly abstract representations of the abstract representations we refer to as numerals.

Here are some of my favorite pictures that I've taken in the past few days with the new camera.