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Eleanor, the party planner

Eleanor announced today that she wanted to have a New Year's party, with just our family. As usual, she was trying to explain this to me while I was doing about 10 other things, so I asked her to write down a list of what she wanted to eat and what she wanted to do, using abbreviations if necessary.

In the past she would have demurred, saying that she didn't know how to spell, or write, or something else. This time, however, she agreed. Here is her list, from both sides of a sheet of paper:

First side:
  • 2009 cupcakes
  • sandwigis
  • yogret (Amanda)
  • OJ Mlik
Second side:
  • race
  • hoop's
  • obstickle
  • sandbox
  • trow
Thus we see that Eleanor is getting braver about sounding out words and writing down what she thinks they sound like. We also see that adding extraneous apostrophes starts early.

Some notes: she wanted to have cupcakes decorated with the numbers 2009. Since we didn't have frosting, we used some chocolate chips on the chocolate cupcakes. The "trow" refers to each person throwing a ball as far as they could, to see who can throw it the farthest. I was never quite clear what she wanted to do with the "hoop's," it involved making hoops out of toys and jumping from one to the other... The obstacle course involved putting pillows on the floor and jumping from cushion to cushion. Amanda didn't understand exactly what she was supposed to do, which created conflict. The kids played in the sand box, but it was pretty cold (for North Carolina) so we didn't stay outside for long.

We had a good time, even though we didn't do all of the activities. Eleanor's party planning ability far outstrips mine at that age.
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