Sneaking

A few photos from this week:

Morgan practicing the violin.

Mikayla's new hat. Hey what did you expect from poor college students. Actually it was hilarious to see her go cross-eyed trying to see what was on her head.

Today we went for a Sunday drive to my favorite barn.

This has been a particularly good week, for many reasons, but today was just crazy! I'm not sure if it was the change in daylight savings time that threw everyone off, but things were just insane at church and at home. Between Mikayla crying from being off schedule and Morgan crying for every reason, including slipping and face-planting in the kitchen, tripping on the stairs and hitting her chin on the rail, being scolded for poor behavior, and dropping and breaking her new ceramic tea set...it's been a loud day.

Speaking of Morgan's ceramic tea set, Morgan is the only little LDS girl that I know who offers hot chocolate, coffee and tea with her pretend play set. She always says "We don't drink coffee, but some people choose to and that's okay." So she makes sure she caters to everyone, which I think is a reward for trying to teach her that coffee is bad, but not the people. But she bought the tea set herself so it means a lot to her and she loves to play pretend.
Actually, Melissa has done an excellent job teaching Morgan about money. Morgan can earn money by doing chores, and when she has enough saved up or knows something she wants then they go together to the store, pick it out, and Morgan pays for the toy herself--even inserting the money into the self-checkout herself. They will walk around the store, Morgan having a good idea of what she wants, and Melissa will tell her how much money she has and how much everything costs. It's been surprising to see her realize the price of some toys and then change her mind, even if she has enough money to buy it. When they went to buy the tea set, she really wanted some stamp pads but she thought they were too expensive. Morgan even offered to buy a ream of office paper because she felt bad using all of our printing paper for drawings.
I was really impressed. I recall when I was twice Morgan's age asking my dad if he could "just write a check" to replace the lamp I broke while trying to cream Greg with a couch cushion; I thought that was all you had to do was write a check, not realizing that money had to be earned.

One night this week Melissa was out having some "alone time" so Morgan and I got to goof off for a while. We first started off eating a bag of cookies her primary teacher gave us. I was well on to my third or fourth cookie when Morgan dropped the last bite of her first cookie into her milk. A minute later that chunk of cookie started to float to the top and Morgan said "Dad, it looks like my skin in the milk, but it's just my cookie." Yummmy!
It only took a second or two to get over the imagery and move on to the rest of the cookies, but Morgan suddenly snatched the bag of remaining cookies and put them away out of sight saying "Dad, its not healthy to eat all of the cookies!"
I would have to say the highlight of the evening was afterwards when I asked Morgan to flex her muscles. With all of her cheer classes she is actually developing some muscle. So I gave her arm a squeeze and said "Whoa!" but she humbly said "I don't have hills like Mickey Mouse or you." She then asked me to flex so I showed her and she said "Whoa! Dad, did you take a muscle class or something?!" If only daddies were as strong as their little girls thought they were.

My favorite game to play with Morgan is what she calls "sneaking." I love to take a bite of food off of Morgan's plate when she is not looking. Or drink her chocolate milk while she is talking to Melissa. She usually doesn't catch me until she sees Melissa's face giving the secret away, but she always reacts by pointing her finger at me saying "Dad! Don't eat my food!" I also love to tease by "sneaking" some candy out of the cupboard hoping not to be seen, but when caught Morgan always asks "What's that?" in a sweet little "Can I have some please?" tone of voice. But I usually respond by looking at the candy, analyzing it, and saying "I don't know" and finally taking another bite as if to finish the investigation and further avoiding her silent plea for candy. But today, she caught me again eating a little bite size twix bar and the game continued. However, she ended it this time with a scolding by climbing to her feet on top of her chair and saying, with her finger pointed directly between my eyes "Daddy! You always sneak candy!" I think she's on to me.