a bold new era of perpetual motion

This morning Gaz started the day asking questions like, "Mommy, what 'contraption' mean?" The rest of the morning followed that pattern. "What 'freezing rain' mean? What 'disaster area' mean?" Good times. Mark has been eagerly awaiting the twenty-questions phase. It looks like it's pretty much here.

There's also the little matter of magnets. After buying and making a bunch to keep her entertained and ensure that her art does not fall down from the filing cabinet, I found all our old magnets in a box in my closet. Now she has twice as many number magnets, and is having a great time yelling out random numbers and trying to assemble them out of magnets. Today she declared that 85 was 18, so I showed her how to put the one and the eight together and she promptly replaced the one with the five. But we're moving in a numbers direction, so that's good.

We have a little cheapo toy keyboard around the house these days, and Gaz dragged me into the living room to "hear my music! Come hear my lovely music!" Sometimes what she does to the keyboard actually doesn't sound half bad considering that it's still mostly the random mashing of keys. She also does this very careful, deliberate thing sometimes wherein she will play the keys sequentially from low to high on the "saxophone" sound setting. It's really cute, if she makes a mistake (like hitting two keys at the same time) she'll start over. So maybe she's getting the notion that one key at a time is a good thing, and that if you make a mistake you can start over. I know she's heard enough of me trying to remember "Chopsticks" and "To a Wild Rose." Mark, of course, has already figured out the Wallace & Gromit theme. He has some mad piano skills.

While coloring on the chalkboard this afternoon, I wrote "Gaz rocks!" in a blank space, which inspired the following conversation:
Me: (reading off the board) "Gaz rocks!"
Gaz: No, you rock. That same thing.
Me: Well, you rock too.
Gaz: No, you rock same time.
It would seem that we rock simultaneously.

We had dancing time while waiting for Mark to get home from work and Gaz ran circles around me, saying, "I can't stop for my life!" She actually could, of course, but it was a funny thing to hear her say. I'm not sure where she learned that.

Today was also diaper experiment day--she's slimmed down enough with the constant growing taller that she's back in size 5 diapers. Diaper Fairy, make a note of it! It's nice to not have to try to make the giant diapers stay on for a change. I have no idea how long this will last, but at least diapers don't go bad.

It's been a hilarious, intense, wild day. Soon to be followed by much more of the same, I'm sure. Maybe tomorrow she'll slow down enough to nap.