Esme bits

The other day she brought home her math practice test for the state testing, and it was 3 wrong out of 40, which was excellent.  We practiced counting money on her allowance, which she gets for helping with chickens now (it is egg based).  She did not want to cooperate at all for a bit.. I don't know to every question  - but she began to get it.  We counted all of her coins separately and then added them together - her addition is really very good.. it is the categorization and 'value' part of the coins she keeps forgetting.  She remembered some of her totals even the next day.

Later she was using the check writer 'toy' (which is an actual antique checkwriter without ink in it) to put something on her drawings.  She said 'perfect' and then went and hung up her drawing (which was me and her laying on an air mattress staring at the stars above) up on the bulletin board.  I noticed what she had stamped at the top of the drawing (on Saturday) was 201426dollars and 04cents.  She was using it as a date stamp.  She has been really keeping up with the date with her tooth fairy sticker calendar and the egg calendar... but using the machine to stamp I thought was insightful :)

An old picture of Esme playing with the checkwriter from November 2010, when she was newly three.

She helped me plant eggplant seeds and transplant small pepper plants to bigger pots the other day.  She wanted to wash her hands every single time they got dirt on them.. this was the girl who would come in covered in mud and cry to get washed just a year ago.  I will admit to doing the same thing with oil or grease, though.. even when I know I need to get my hands right back into it in a few minutes it feels better to get it off.

//in other news: Reorganized a bit in the studio space... borrowed an unused cabinet from downstairs to put in the empty corner and get things off the flat table space to work better.  Then sat looking through magazines, thinking about time in general, what I want to get done, why I want to get it done, what supplies I have on hand... I made Esme a little robot toy but did not spend much time on it, and she was not very happy with the results compared to the 'professional' one she had seen pictures of... I told her I could add a bit to him another day, another tool for him, once he has learned to use his wrench etc etc.  I know I need to sew her more clothes but she really has a lot of clothes - just not in good condition for school  School is ending here in about a month, and then, of course, it will begin again a few months after that.  Once again, time.. and the shortness of it along the way... what projects need to be done, what is worthy to be done with the time we have etc etc... soon the garden will take up more of our time, as well.