As I was returning to work from lunch today, I saw a man lying on his back under a tree beside the road. I thought perhaps he was hurt or exhausted from exercising. I slowed down as I drove by and realized he was doing sit-ups. WTF? Why do those on the side of a road? Jane believes one would only do that if they were trying to show off. She’s probably right.[[[ Think of non-sequitur now. Got it...proceeding. ]]]
Holly loves the Littlest Pet Shop. The toys consist of a series of tiny cats, dogs, birds and other pets. She has been collecting these over the last several months and has amassed approximately 25 of them. Several weeks ago she began the tedious process of naming each of them. As she named each one, she wrote the name down in on a piece of blank printer paper. The paper was a jumbled mess of names like Patches, Clover, Princess and more.
Last night, she asked if she could play with the Littlest Pet Shop toys. I said sure and she proceeded to put the pets on the coffee table. She encountered the piece of paper with the names and stared at it for a few seconds with her face screwed up in thought. She turned to me and said, ‘I have an idea. You pretend to be a customer in the pet shop and then you can purchase the pets. You can use this piece of paper and ask for the pets by name.’ I scanned the paper and picked out the ones that were legible enough to read. I asked for Princess. She dug through a bag containing the little figures and would pull one out, look at it, and then put it back. Finally she located Princess. I figured she had randomly grabbed one, but was curious.
I asked for another one by name. She spent about a minute and pulled it out too and authoritatively announced that this was the correct one and that it was very pretty and would make a great pet. Since Jane had somewhat participated in the original naming of the pets I took the sheet to the kitchen and told Jane to pick one out. Jane yelled out ‘Clover’ and a few seconds later Holly brought the one named Clover.
My next idea was to have her put all of the pets on the coffee table in the order that they are listed on the sheet. She changed my idea a little bit and put them in the pet hotel instead. Over the next 10 minutes, she carefully examined the name on the paper and the pet in the bag and lined each one up. Somehow that little six year old brain had memorized the name of every single one of those pets. I have no idea how she did it.
Holly has always possessed a wicked memory. Jane has alluded to this in her blog before, but I just had to reiterate after observing the Littlest Pet Shop episode. Usually her memory is beneficial to her and us. We’ll be looking for something and she’ll know EXACTLY where it is. Other times, her memory turns out to upset her. An example; this morning she decided that she wanted pig tails in her hair. She had a very specific set of pig tail holders in mind. The band was light pink and it had white beads on the end with little red hearts. She knew they existed, she knew what they looked like, but none of us could find them. This is probably a case where Jane or I put them somewhere and have forgotten. All in all, I think her excellent memory will serve her well in life.
Wednesday night we went to our city’s 4th of July celebration. I absolutely love the show they put on. We can get really close to the fireworks too. Both years, we’ve set up on a hill so we can recline on a blanket and watch the show. This year we moved closer to the center and got an even better view. The picture above is from the finale, taken on my mobile phone with no zoom. We were close!!
