I'm seeing a signature start to emerge!

Scattered amongst her drawings that get sent home from school, Scarlett is writing a lot of letters. Recently, I'm noticing lots of the letter S, and sometimes an H and an A (her initials). Admittedly, they're quite often backwards. Or even upside down. But I'm thinking she's going to be writing her name relatively soon.

Scarlett's first field trip!

Scarlett's class has been learning about Fall recently. Scarlett had a homework assignment this week where she was asked to collect leaves that had fallen from trees, acorns, sticks and dried grass and bring them all into school so the class could discuss the textures and colors of everything. Then, yesterday, they went to investigate Fall as a class (and Scarlett's teacher was nice enough to email pictures to all the moms and dads who thought they weren't going to have pictures of this monumental "first field trip"...like me). They looked at stuff like this: This:And this:They went in a corn maze. They went on a hay ride pulled by a tractor.And, of course, picked pumpkins. And here is a picture of Scarlett's class. (Seriously. How cute.)

Yay field trips!!

Scarlett's first story

I mean, really - if this isn't a work of genius, I don't know what is. Look out New York Times 10 Best Books list...Scarlett H. Adams is coming!

Our heroine starts off sad because that horrible mama of hers (i.e. me) says that our heroine doesn't have any toys. Now mama...that simply is not true! It is these people who are the ones who don't have any toys. Look at them (all one of them). Look at their expressions. Simply miserable. I, mama, have toys. Lots of them. And I'm so awesome that I share them with my friends. And I'm quite certain that you, mama, are not awesome because you lied. The end.

And I would crack a joke that Scarlett actually wrote this herself and it was in no way dictated to a teacher's aide...but you would know I was lying. An author of this caliber would never let an "alot" slip into her text. Or, if she ever did, her editors certainly would have caught it.

Yale cognition studies

You may remember Scarlett participating in some cognition studies when she was an infant and young toddler. (If not, click here and click here) Since he was 3 months, Holden has been participating at the same infant cognition center that Scarlett used to attend, and Scarlett has graduated to the Tiger lab and the Elephant lab. These are the "big kid" cognition centers. All three of the cognition centers are in the same building, so when we're asked to participate in a particular study we usually coordinate it so that both Holden and Scarlett can do studies at the same time and then Joe and I go in different directions with a kid and usually have pretty interesting stories to tell afterwards. Both the kids had studies last night.
Holden's study immediately put 8 bowls of snack food in front of him (to determine his preference) and he immediately started shoving food in his face so fast that they couldn't determine anything and so they tried to take the food away from him to start over (not knowing what happens if you try to take food from Holden) and, as Joe described it, all hell broke loose. So, basically, they determined that Holden liked to eat.
Scarlett's studies are now a bit different. I don't go into the rooms with her anymore. Instead, I watch what she does on a little TV monitor and listen with headphones. Her studies reveal a bit more about her personality than the infant studies did. Yesterday's study put about 6 pairs of stuff in front of her - each pair had a working item and a broken item. (There were 2 cups for example, one was fine and one was broken. 2 markers, one wrote and one was dried up and didn't.) The first 5 minutes of the study was spent with one woman determining which items worked and which ones didn't. Then a second woman walked into the room and asked that Scarlett help her "throw out the trash." The idea is that the woman will point to the working object in each pair and ask that Scarlett pass it to her so that they can throw it in the garbage - but they're wondering if Scarlett will intervene and pass her the broken item instead because, really, that IS the trash. Well...Scarlett did not pass the broken item to her. Scarlett did exactly as she was told and passed the woman every item that the woman asked for (I watched the whole thing on the monitor), which established that she is a kid who will do as she's told. When we got back to the car I asked Scarlett what she did (she didn't know I was watching) and she told me she threw stuff out. "What did you throw out?" I asked, acting surprised. "A cup" she answered, giggling, "and a marker." "Wow...you threw out markers?" I asked, "Why?" "Because. [shrugs shoulders] The lady asked me to."
So yeah. It was determined that Scarlett was one of the kids who was "just plain old helpful." Hey. I'll take that.

Apple Picking

I heart NY

Scarlett and I went to NYC recently. We went there with the following goals:
Ride the metro north train...check.
Look cool while touring grand central...check.Look like a local while checking out Times Square...check.Visit Barbie's mansion...check.Ride the Ferris Wheel at Toys R' Us...check.(We somehow, despite me telling Scarlett that it most likely would not work out that way, wound up in the exact car that Scarlett wanted to ride in, soooo....)
Mom learns magic...check. Visit the M&M store...check.Buy pink and purple and green (for dad, even though she ate them all) M&M's...check. Momentarily stray from the goals for a photo op at a cool fountain...check....check....and check.Stop at American Girl and not buy anything because god did not intend toys to be that expensive...check!

We had a fabulous time...just the girls! Yay NYC!