As you know, Bug is a wacky kid. I told you about the sandwiches already. Now she won’t eat bananas because she had a bad dream about eating a banana that was her friend. According to Bug, all bananas have faces now. If I even think of offering her one as a snack, her bottom lip quivers. It’s getting bad.

I’ve taken to peeling and slicing them in secret and then sneaking them into her peanut butter sandwiches. So far sliced bananas seem to be okay. Who knows though. Tomorrow she could swear off carrots or broccoli.

This is a regular four-year-old thing, right?

Bug also gets attached to things. Silly things like leaves, flowers, sticks and rocks, old princess band-aids and candy wrappers that are pink. She has a large collection of dried monkey puzzle branches that looks like a nest of rat tails growing on our patio.

That’s what these things are right? I have no idea.

Every time we go on a certain walk, where these lay scattered on the ground, she must carry at least one home. That’s the same walk where she must walk on the clover with bare feet or all hell will break lose. But that’s another story along the lines of: if you do anything twice with Bug it becomes a routine and therefore must never be veered from until death. I hear this is also normal with four-year-olds.

But sometimes I just have to be the mom and say, no. I can only put up with bits of dried leaves and sticks in her car seat and old yucky band-aids squirreled away in my purse for so long. So I’ve taken to inventing crazy fantastical stories for why we have to leave things behind or, gasp, throw them away. I tried tough love, I’ve tried explaining the logic until I turn blue in the face and it just doesn’t work. I’m tired of the hour-long meltdowns of tears. Bug is not a logical child.

Now we leave the rocks and leaves and flowers behind for the fairies. The princess bandages are going into the trash so that the elves at the dump can use them to build a giant castle for all the toys that have been discarded. The eucalyptus blossoms that blew off the top of the car sunroof are going to be gathered by fairies and made into hats. When her temporary-tattoo monster washes off her hand (pictured at top and below), we’re saying that it’s fading away and going to its monster-land in the sky. You should see the wistful look she gets looking up, imagining them flouncing around in the puffy clouds.

It beats the tears, I’ll tell you that much. Now if I can just think up a good story for all those bananas that have faces on them…

The kids I babysit have wonderful things and every once in a while they hand-me-down them to Bug. We end up with all sorts of designer clothes, board games with missing pieces, half worked-through workbooks, knick knacks and odds and ends. It’s a nice perk.

Some of the things are junk like a plastic crown that says “Irish Princess” with tacky green clovers all over it. Bug wore that silly crown every day for a week until she finally broke it while trying to wear it on her leg for some reason. Another treasure is an old music box that is covered in stickers and the ballerina is missing from inside it. Normal people would probably drop these gently-worn gifts off at a thrift store but Bug fell in love with it and begged me to make a new ballerina for it.

I hemmed and hawed over how to make a tiny ballerina. I thought maybe a pipe-cleaner and some tulle would do the trick but I couldn’t quite work it out. Then I remembered this book we read a while back about a cat who wouldn’t come inside. I was quite inspired by the Super Sculpy figurines and at the back of the book the artist has a nice write up explaining how she created the scenes. It’s brilliant.

I thought I might try this with a ballerina!

It was a little rough-going. Obviously I need to work on my fine-sculpting skills. But it was fun and delightfully easy to paint. Her face needs some lip reduction but Bug loves her.

And best of all, she twirls to the music when wound up. We haven’t quite figured out how to get the box to close without cracking her in half yet but we’re working on it. I’m thinking there might be a series of Sculpy ballerinas in my future.

I’ve been thinking I should just sit down for 15 minutes every day and write a quick post. I don’t mean to imply that I can stick to any sort of “every-day routine” (I seem to have an aversion to that) but I thought it might be a good idea in theory. And then I could label these quick-and-dirty posts “the 15 minute posts” so you’ll understand they are quick and breezy and bound not to be written very well.

Anyway, that’s that. I hate talking meta stuff about blogging because I’ve already done it a thousand times and what possibly could I have to say that you haven’t read already.

So what else is going on?

Bug is going through a growth spurt. A real one. I think she’s grown two-inches in one month. Is that even possible? She did grow a quarter of an inch in one week. We recorded it. It’s crazy. She’s taken to standing on the other side of the bed and asking me if she’s standing on something. She really looks like she is. I keep thinking she’s wearing my big thick clog high heels or she’s standing on her step stool or something but then I come around the side of the bed and there are her feet on the floor. It gets me every time and then she erupts into a fit of giggles because she thinks it’s the best joke on me ever.

That girl.

Part of me superstitiously thinks it’s the gymnastics. She loves it and has been bouncing everywhere since. I think her muscles and bones needed a prompt and now that she’s getting regular stimulation outside of television, her bones and muscles are shouting “REACH FOR THE STARS!!!” or something. I don’t know, I just know that we’ve got to keep up the sessions. They are a good thing.

Except now she’s telling me not to take my laptop with me when we go to gymnastics so that I can pay better attention and watch her do her tricks. I’m not going to listen to her though because those 45 minutes in the stands with free gym wifi are the most productive minutes I’ve had all week. I’m actually getting some work done again and I really need to keep that up. Besides the gym is so big I have to squint to even see her. I think she can handle a few minutes without my constant attention. She’s already got the teachers doting after her.

She loves her teachers.

And now 15 minutes is up.