This past Christmas, Mamaw gave me some light up tweezers.  Seeing as they have to accomodate a battery and light and other necessary hardware, they’re a bit bigger than regular tweezers.  The Bean sees these come out and knows where they are kept.

Yesterday, T walked through the library to see a small box with a strange light coming from it.  When he opened it, the tweezers were in the box with the light on.  Knowing The Bean obviously had gotten them out and put them there, he just put them back where they belonged.

Cut to this afternoon when a huge cry of “Oh Noooooooo” comes from the library.   T rushes in to find The Bean holding the little box and saying, “my glowy beetle is gone!”

Apparently, she “caught” the glowy beetle and put it in the box for it’s home.  Here’s a picture of her “glowy beetle.”

I just love her imagination!

The Bean spent Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday at home this week because she has had a horrible case of hives and some other symptoms that turned out to be okay, but were scary enough to send my blood pressure through the roof until the on-call pediatrician called me back.

Anyway!

The Bean went back to school today.  Based on past performances when she’s been home for an extended length of time, T wasn’t particularly shocked to see her name on the board for getting trouble or needing time out or whatever when he picked her up today.  Her first day back is usually a re-adjustment back to school rules and routines day.

Not making any big deal of it, T asked her, “so why is your name on the board.”

“Oh,” The Bean replied matter of factly and completely un-disturbed, “I wasn’t listening.”

Her reaction when he asked her about her name being on the board really illustrates something that I’ve been saying about her for a long time.  The Bean marches to her own drum, and if you can’t learn the beat, everything you do with her will be a misstep.  She doesn’t mind if her way of doing something doesn’t mesh with yours.  It wasn’t at all a big deal that her name was on the board.  Now the fact that her name being on the board meant she didn’t get her end-of-the-day-for-good-behavior piece of candy was more of a concern to her.

When I was her age, I would have been horrified to have my name on the board for getting in trouble.  I’ve always been someone who wanted to do things the way I was supposed to and get it right.  Now that doesn’t mean that I blindly follow, I do definitely make up my own mind about things.  But the whole name-on-the-board-reaction has made me consciously realize something that I think I’ve known for a long time.

The Bean is going to measure success in her own way throughout her life.  Just because someone else holds up a yardstick doesn’t mean she’s going to adopt that standard as her own.  If they try to measure her against their yardstick, she will probably care little to nothing about what they think unless it falls in line with something she thinks is important.

It really brings home to me how vital it is that I continue working hard to know my child, that I continue to teach her values and how to evaluate things against God’s standard.  She’s going to do what she thinks is the right thing to do.  I’ve got to teach her how to figure that out.

Good thing I know someone who raised a child like that as well as someone who was and still is a child like that.  I have a feeling I’ll be picking their brains for years to come.

Not too long after we moved into our new house, we saw a tiny lizard in our atrium.  Turns out, that was just the first of many sightings of the gecko we’ve named Ollie.  Ollie lives in the house and has been seen scampering across the living room, down the hallway, and on the screen door of our atrium.  We’re appreciative of his company since he helps keep the bug population down.

He was out today after T and The Bean got home, and T managed to get a good photo of him.  Ollie even let The Bean pet him before he scampered off.

T thinks we may have more than one gecko in the house.  If so, we’ve already decided to name the other one Stan.

….I’ve been having some fun playing with it.

This week’s them at I ♥ Faces is Bubbles.  I haven’t entered one of their contests in quite a while.  But I couldn’t pass this week’s theme up.

This photo is one of my all time favorites of The Bean.

The other day, I picked The Bean up from daycare to discover that she had written all over herself with an ink pen she had found somewhere.

When I asked her what she had been doing, she replied,

“I was Mulan.”

Silly Bean!

For those of you not familiar, there is a scene in the movie where Mulan writes notes on her arm so she won’t forget what to say to the matchmaker.

My 8 year old point and shoot camera has been acting up for the past few weeks.  It’s decided that no matter how new the batteries are that I put in it, that it’s “low.” Seeing as I can’t imagine not having a camera to snap photos of The Bean and our adventures, I’ve been getting recommedations on a replacement and checking Consumer Reports.

But I saw this post by Beth just the other day describing what she did when her camera did the same thing mine is.  Rubbing alcohol on the battery contacts.  So this weekend, I’ll be picking up some rubbing alcohol to see if I can my camera up and going again!

Thanks for the tip, Beth.  I’ll let you know how it turns out!

In other stories, The Bean has recently been pretending she’s a mermaid.  According to her, mermaids go sans clothing….

Except for blue buckets that they wear on their heads as helmets.

I’m hoping she only pretends to be a mermaid at home.  I’ll let you know if I end up with a note from school.