homemade preschooler gifts: gak

HB and I got ourselves invited to the birthday party of the almost-three-year-old that HB nannies. We wanted to give him a gift that would be handmade and a hands-on sensory experience. So we decided to make gak!

After scouring online recipes and waffling about borax versus Metamucil as one of the key ingredients (borax may be harmful if swallowed), we decided to just go with borax since we had it on hand for making homemade laundry detergent, whereas we would have had to buy a big container of Metamucil just to get less than a tablespoon of the stuff for the recipe. We figured we'd put a warning label on the jar of gak to alert the parents about borax being potentially toxic. Both the three-year-old and his one-year-old sister don't put much non-food stuff in their mouths anymore, so we figured the borax gak would be safe enough. Gak is a good supervision-required activity anyway, since it's notoriously difficult to dig out of carpet fibers.

We used one of the many recipes online for flubber (one of the many aliases of gak). HB had an excellent time mucking about mixing the gak ingredients while I made the jar label, and she speculated that making the gak would actually be an awesome activity to do with kids, as long as they're old enough to keep their hands out of their mouths. The part that took the longest by far was kneading food coloring drops into each chunk of gak before we dropped each into the jar. (We figured the kids would mix all the colors together sooner or later anyway, so we didn't bother to divide the colors into different jars.)

To finish off the gift, we included a Gak Explorer Kit made from objects we scrounged up around the house: chopsticks, straws, and plastic knives slipped into a never-worn lone toe sock.

Maybe you will decide to do this for a preschooler in your life too! And if you're as mature as us, you'll save a chunk of the gak for yourself so that you can plunge it in and out of a salvaged salsa container to simulate flatulence sounds. You will spend a solid half hour doing this and giggling madly after the kid you're babysitting that night has fallen asleep.

High fives,
-MP

gratefulness

I often take for granted that so many people in my life enthusiastically and unhesitatingly accept my relationship with HB. About a year ago we both started feeling like we were outgrowing the term "girlfriend" as an accurate way to refer to each other. We outgrew "girlfriend" not only because it started feeling too juvenile (especially during the time I was grasping at everything I could to project myself as Adult to validate my role as a facilitator for several groups of teens) but also because so many people hear "girlfriend" and split it, destroying its synergy: girl - friend. HB is neither my casual friend nor described well by binary gender tags. So gradually we weaned ourselves off the term "girlfriend" and replaced it with "partner." It fits us better: the longevity of our relationship, the adultness of it, the consensual equity of it, the queerness and genderqueerness of it.

And, astoundingly, virtually everyone in my life embraces that. Not only do people love and celebrate HB and me, as individuals and as a unit, but for the most part, our friends and family echo our language. When our "girlfriends" started fading out and our "partners" filtered in, we fielded a few questions here and there, but for the most part, people just picked it up and went with it. Even HB's mother, whose cultural context influences her tendency to introduce me as HB's "friend" most of the time, tacitly accepts our relationship and has recently started deliberately including me when collectively referring to her "kids and their significant others."

I am so used to people getting it that I can be completely blindsided and downright hurt when someone casually redefines our relationship by a simple substitution of a single word.

Today when Sasha and Ezra's dad came home, he asked for recommendations of other people who could act as kid care backup if I'm ever unavailable. I suggested my partner, who I mentioned to him last week in a different context, both times with "she" pronouns attached.

Sasha had been dancing around, only half-listening, and she asked who we were talking about. Without missing a beat, Sasha's dad said, "Her roommate."

And yeah, that hurt.

If I had said "husband," would he have translated it to Sasha as "roommate" or "friend"? What if I had said boyfriend? Wife? Girlfriend?

I have no way of knowing how deliberate that translation was. Was it to avoid a potentially awkward talk with Sasha about gender and sexuality and relationships? Was it an unconscious sleight of brain, a mistaken mistranslation? I doubt it was intended to offend me. I doubt he realized that it would sting, that it would feel like invalidation, rejection, refusal to support -- let alone acknowledge -- the reality and legitimacy of who I am and who my partner is and who we are together.

As I biked home, I cycled through a bitter inner soliloquy about gratefulness and ungratefulness. A lot of it sounded like: "I spend eight hours a day three days a week raising your children. I am teaching Sasha to read and to explore and to be kinder. I feed, nap, bathe, and carry Ezra around on my chest. I kiss his cheeks and tickle his belly and sing him every lullaby I know. I make sure the dog gets a walk, and I clean it up when she vomits on the rug. Even though you have never asked me to and have never thanked me for it, I wash all the dishes in the sink. And then with one casual word I feel like my family doesn't matter to you."

But now that I have put a few hours and a solid venting session between myself and that incident, perspective is sliding back into place. Regardless of what, if anything, Sasha's dad meant by editing my words, HB is still my partner and my family. And my life is -- miraculously and wonderfully -- filled with people who know that and who reserve wide open spaces for us, together, in their hearts.

Hugs,
-MP

Sasha Says, ep. 8

A week after the election: "I voted for Obama. All the kids vote for Obama."

"Do you know Barack Obama's real name? Barack. And do you know Mitt Romney's real name? Mitt."

Flexing her itty bitty biceps: "I'm so strong the Mandrakes can't kill me!" [in Harry Potter, Mandrakes are plants that, when immature, can knock out a human with their cries, and when fully grown their cries are so horrible they can actually kill humans.]

I texted Sasha's mom a picture of the activity we were working on, and she texted back saying "Tell Sasha I say HI!" When I relayed this to Sasha, she rolled her eyes and said in her most dramatic teenager voice, "Boring." I laughed and started to type a text, and, panicked, Sasha said, "Don't tell her I said that! It's unpolite!"

Me: "It's chilly out here!"
Sasha: "It's okay, we have strength!"

Me: "I missed the goal! Alas!"
Sasha: "Alas, you swabs!"
Me: "Huh?"
Sasha: "You know, like pirates say."

High fives,
-MP

Harry Potter Holidays

Sasha had Friday and Monday off from school, so I wanted to make sure I had plenty of activities prepared to keep her busy for two whole days. Since we've been reading the Harry Potter books together, and she loves the hell out of 'em, I thought she would enjoy a load of Harry Potter themed activities.

My criteria for activities was:

1. It must be fun.
2. It must support learning.
   (Literacy, science, art, physical activity, music, social skills, problem solving, etc.)
3. It must be relevant and doable for a single six-year-old who has only read the first two Harry Potter books.

I searched the internet for "Harry Potter activities for kids," but almost everything that came up was kind of pathetic. I tend to shy away from things that restrict kids' creativity, so pretty much any website that started with the words "free printables" was off the table. Coloring a pre-printed owl or doing a crossword puzzle? No thanks. One "top ten" list of Harry Potter games for kids I found was almost entirely composed of screen-oriented activities like marathoning the movies, downloading an iWand iPhone app, and playing trivia online. As much as I love the occasional movie marathon, that's not really a great option for Sasha, since a.) we have enough power struggles over movies as it is and b.) she already vetoed watching the movies because she thinks they will be too scary for her, and she's probably right.

What's a nanny to do?

Make her own activities, of course! Here's my lineup of fun, educational Harry Potter activities, after the cut.

Sasha Says, ep. 7

Referring to her dad's crooked teeth: "You know how my dad's teeth are all piled up?"

Talking about her dog: "She had the fleas."

Flexing her biceps: "I like exercising because it makes me tough!"

"There's something fishy around here."

On the walk home from school, pulling up her shirt to show me what resembles a magenta child-sized sports bra: "I'm wearin' my joggin' clothes because it makes me really fast! Because it makes it so I can't sweat so I'm fast."

We had been having a verbal tug-of-war about something or other, and she decided the best way to win the argument would be: "Yeah, well, my dad is famous." (He's not.) I replied, "That's what Draco Malfoy says." She looked at me in genuine horror and backpedaled: "Actually, my dad's not famous."

High fives,
-MP

Leaf Puppets

The last week or so, Sasha has more cheerful and easygoing than she has been for the last few months. Perhaps she's finally adapted to the school routine, or to having a new baby brother, or to having a new nanny; perhaps it's some other unfathomable combination of variables. Either way, I'll take it. It certainly makes me more excited to plan activities for her, since she's more likely to be receptive to them!

On Wednesday this week I showed up to Sasha's house equipped with a box of googley eyes and a bottle of Elmer's glue. On the walk home from school (which was, mercifully, sunny) I started picking up fallen leaves. I explained, "I brought googley eyes and glue to your house, and so I thought we could collect some leaves and--"

Sasha interrupted, excitedly: "I have a great idea! We could put googley eyes on the leaves and make leaf puppets!"

Pretty much exactly what I was thinking, although it hadn't occurred to me to call them puppets, which implies that we might produce a puppet show. Awesome!

We did step 1: collect leaves, spread all over kitchen counter; and step 2: adhere googley eyes to the leaves and allow to dry. Sasha also got out her gel pens and drew freckles, a mouth, and other details on her favorite leaf.

We'll see if she's interested in using them as puppets on Friday.

Hugs,
-MP

in honor of the election...

Here is a piece of art Sasha made a couple of weeks ago. She told me she was "definitely voting for Obama" and that she and one of her friends were going to hold a demonstration and march in their neighborhood to "make everyone vote for Obama."

it's a "balloon" duct taped to a stick

On a more personal note, I tend to lean toward Emma Goldman's philosophies about voting -- primarily that it's a bullshit system whereby we are pacified into believing that voting is equivalent to making actual change. The notion that we exercise agency because we get to choose who and what to vote for reminds me a lot of offering a preschooler the red shirt or the blue shirt when you're just trying to get out the door to get more diapers. Yes, it's a choice, but it's a limited and coerced choice, designed primarily to placate one's desire for autonomy and control, and not to actually allow full participation in decision-making processes.

That said, I also recognize that a lot of folks in this country who are affected by who is in office and what policies are put into place do not have the privilege of voting. I also recognize that if I, as an individual, simply abstained from voting to protest the screwed up, coercive political system in the US, it wouldn't change anything. A president will still be elected. Local officials will still be sworn into office. Ballot measures will still become law or not become law. Taxes will still be levied. The only thing abstaining from voting would do would be to exclude me from having any say at all. It would mean someone else picks the red or blue shirt for me because I'm still at the mercy of people with more power than me, and their agenda includes getting diapers and by god we're not doing it shirtless.

So even though our democratic election process invokes patriotic rhetoric about "freedom" and "change" that's more stormclouds than actual deluge, at least my infinitesimally small opinion has been requested. It ain't much, but a vote for Obama is one itty bitty squeak closer to avoiding a Romney/Ryan presidency. At least under the Obama/Biden administration I have a chance of seeing people in the White House acknowledge that trans* and gender non-conforming folks like my partner exist and matter. We have a president who publically recognizes and supports all marriages, not just heterosexual ones, and who has a pretty solid track record of making this a better country in which to be LGBTQ, at least legally. That's a pretty stark contrast from Romney's "I didn't know you [gay people] had families" comment. Yes we do. We have families, both families of origin and chosen/created families. And we, like all people, deserve recognition, respect, and equitable access to resources.

Excuse me while I sign off to spend some quality time alternating between trying to plan Harry Potter themed activities to fill Sasha's two upcoming no-school days, and agonizing over news coverage of the election results.

In hopes of high fives,
-MP

Sasha Says, ep. 6

For the past 10 minutes Sasha had been pretending to be a cat, and as I petted her and gave her imaginary kitty food I recited a few cat facts. She abruptly stopped pretending to be a cat, and said in this very annoyed voice, "Please stop talking about cats."

Me: "Are you excited to go trick-or-treating on Halloween?"
Sasha, adamant: "NO."

As I sing the chorus to "This is Halloween" from Nightmare Before Christmas: "I know that exactly same song!"

 "You know what? All food is from the store. But some of it is from farms, and some of it is made in factories. So you can go to the farm to get foods from the grocery store and factories."

"Santa Claus has the same initials as me. If Santa Claus had initials. I don't think he does."

"I know how that song goes. But don't trust me."

"Books are like movies, except books the screen is in your head. I think I like real screens better."

"At the morning meeting our principal did a dance. He was really bad at it. It looked like a cowboy wearing a tie, which is very unlikely."

Hugs,
-MP

Borrowing Kids

Halloween is my favorite holiday. I don't know if it's just that I'm breathlessly in love with fall, or that the holiday has so many opportunities for one-time-a-year artistic endeavors (carving pumpkins! sewing costumes!), or that it has really fascinating historic and contemporary ties to other celebrations like Samhain and Dia de los Muertos. Whatever the reason, I get super stoked for Halloween right around when the first rainstorm slicks the city in October every year.

The past three or four years, October 31st itself has been rather a letdown. I'm in this liminal space between kid and adult that is almost incompatible with Halloween:

• I'm definitely too old to go trick-or-treating without kids in tow.
• I don't have kids.
• I don't like the types of parties that people my age typically attend.

So the last few years, if I bothered to make a costume at all, I couldn't bring myself to put it on for Halloween. Instead, I sat in my room and avoided Halloween entirely. Last year we didn't even get any trick-or-treaters.

This year, Jaden's mom took pity on me and invited me and HB (who also babysits Jaden) to go trick-or-treating with their family and a friend's family. HB and I clumsily, valiantly biked to Jaden's place wearing our costumes and carrying everything we would need for the next 24 hours. (We've been cat sitting for a person whose cats require us to stay overnight, so we've been hauling food and clothes back and forth from our house to the cat place each day for two weeks.) I'm sure we were quite the sight. Totally worth it when Jaden bounced over to greet us and play with our costumes.

Ultimately we were a flock of six adults chaperoning two three-year-olds. Only two of the adults hadn't dressed in costume, which means some houses offered us candy, too! We had a grand time, and the kids did too.

HB and I rounded off our night with hot spiced apple cider and a movie (and unsuccessfully tried to cajole the cats into snuggling with us), and we agreed that when we have kids, we hope that, like Jaden's parents, we will invite kid-loving kid-less adults into our kids' lives. It's rewarding for everyone.

High fives,
-MP

Mystery Suprise Secret Color Reveal Playdough

On Fridays Sasha doesn't have any afterschool activities, so I have twice as much time with her as on the other days of the week. She is happiest -- and I am happiest -- if I provide her with structured activities to fill that three and a half hours until her parents and I swap places. If I don't plan anything, trusting the hypothetically boundless imagination and creativity of a six-year-old, we inevitably devolve into a tug-a-war over how many tv shows she ought to be allowed to watch in exchange for however many minutes or pages of academic busywork she is willing to complete. It's a lot of whining and dramatic fake tears and I'm so over it.

Earlier this week while one of the babies slept, I borrowed half a cup of salt, half a cup of water, and god knows how much flour to whip up a batch of playdough. In a somewhat unsuccessful attempt to alleviate that horrible playdough smell, I added vanilla extract, which really just made it smell weirder. So, maybe pick a different scent if you're going to Try This At Home.

While Sasha was at school, I separated out the playdough into balls, molded them into shapes sufficient to receive food coloring drops, and rolled them into balls so the food coloring was hidden on the inside of the balls. The idea was that as you start kneading each ball, the color is revealed! It's Mystery Surprise Secret Color Reveal Playdough!

I made the orange one as an example, or maybe I just spilled food coloring everywhere. Guess.

And then, if you feel like following directions beyond the exciting "what's inside" part which takes one second per ball of playdough, you knead the heck out of it until it's all a uniform color. Then you store each ball in empty and washed babyfood jars, for future use.

Sasha is unpredictable enough that I tend to approach any project I plan with "If she's even half interested it's a win. If she takes it in her own direction, go with it." So when she decided that, rather than fully knead each ball to produce uniform color and store each in its separate baby food jar, she wanted to smash all the half-mixed colors together into a "sandwich," I just cheerfully asked open-ended questions packed with science vocabulary like "hypothesis" and "theory."

"it's a sandwich with green bread"

With our greenish-yellowish-pinkish-orangish-brownish dough, we formed cakes and cookies, made imprints with nuts and leaves we'd collected last week, and played Playdough Monster, which was really just me chasing Sasha around trying to convince her to wash the playdough residue off hands so that I wouldn't "eat them."

That's a "cake" I made for Sasha while she sang Patty-Cake

It kept her entertained for 45 minutes, so I just need to come up with two or three more activities per Friday to totally avert the iPad wars.

Hugs,
-MP

Sasha Says, ep. 5

On weeds: "If you're nice to them, they'll be nice to you."

After watching the debates with her parents, who reportedly didn't really talk about their views with her: "I like Obama but I don't like Governor Mitt Romney. He seems greedy. I'm voting for Obama."

"Guess who my favorite character in Totoro is? Miyazaki." [Miyazaki is the art director, which she knows]

Referring to slugs: "They're stretched out so they're thinnyer."

Sasha: "Can I watch a movie? You said I could watch a movie when we got home."
Me: "I really don't remember saying you could watch a movie."
Sasha: "Trust me, you did. I'm a kid, so I have a better rememberer than you."

"Pumpkins are fruits because they grow on a vine. All things that grow on vines are fruits. Take my word for it. If you want to. You can decide if you want to take my word for it." 

"Spiderman got bited by a spider that had chemicals in it, and then he started cobbing web."

"Know why I want to watch Rugrats? Because it reminds me of my boyfriend. Because it has love in it."
Later in the conversation: "I love Q, that's why he's my boyfriend. But he doesn't like me because he's afraid I might kiss him. So I'm not his girlfriend."

High fives,
-MP

Scavenger Hunt Bingo

I've been trying to think of ways to get Sasha out of the house to enjoy these last few warm, dry(ish) fall days, since the rains and the cold are just a storm system away. I whipped up a "Sasha's Fall Scavenger Hunt Bingo" page in half an hour one evening this week. Ecology plus reading fundamentals plus art, all in game format? I hoped she'd think it was fun and awesome, and not stupid or boring or too hard. She can be hard to predict.

Due to a roughhousing injury, Sasha had an abbreviated day at school on Friday. As she started a third episode of Rugrats on the iPad, the dog danced around nipping at us for attention with increasing desperation, and the baby upped his fussing, I tentatively suggested a walk. "Are you feeling better enough to go on a scavenger hunt?"

She considered the question briefly, then said, "I will be, after one more movie." (Movie meaning episode, in Sasha-speak.)

So 20 minutes later I crammed Ezra in the Ergo on my back, leashed up the dog, refused a "one more movie pleeeeease" request and reminded Sasha about the scavenger hunt, and we headed out. (I recommended a sweatshirt or coat but she balked and I didn't push it. She didn't seem cold on the walk, so one point for the "trust the kid to know their own needs" approach.)

She had such a good time with the scavenger hunt that she announced, "When we get back, I'm going to make you a scavenger hunt!" (She did, but by the time she'd finished drawing it she'd lost interest in going back outside.)

The only thing we absolutely could not find was slugs. I'm not convinced she actually saw a spider or any mushrooms because those two included some vague gesturing into bushes, but good enough. Although it wasn't in my original plan, she wanted to collect up the things that were reasonable to bring home; no live animals or pumpkins off the neighbor's porch.

All in all, a successful fall activity. Plus the dog got her walk, Ezra got some fuss-curing fresh air, and I got to totally bore Sasha with a few soliloquies about species of oak trees and photosynthesis and decomposition and adaptation.

Hugs,
-MP

Expanding

By happenstance more than intention, my partner HB landed the dream nannying position. When I first read about the mom online, before we knew the family needed child care, I told HB, "She sounds like you in ten years!" The family is a car-free, cloth-diapering, music-playing, art-making, urban farming foursome a five minute bike ride from our front door. The kids are three and one. The guy that HB is taking bike mechanic classes from rents out the basement. The kids are happy to play in the mud for hours, pausing to chase the chickens around the yard. It's only 10-12 hours a week, so HB still has time for her two classes, her tutoring job, and her two regular volunteering shifts. But she'll make enough to pay rent each month, which is a huge relief on her savings account.

She was nervous her first day, since it's been awhile since she's taken care of kids those ages. She got the baby's cloth diaper on wrong, and didn't feed the kids enough for lunch, but had a pretty good time otherwise. In the evening, I coached her on typical schedules and needs for each age -- how often to check a diaper, how to space snacks -- and she did great the second day. Today is her third day with the kids.

This week was a trial week. HB got an email from the family saying that they interviewed another well-qualified nanny, but that they would rather HB continue with them. It's a year-long commitment.

At the end of each day, our ritual is to recount our day to each other. My recitation is typically full of naptime drama, progress toward milestones (Athena just started solid foods and Ezra began crawling yesterday), and Sasha's antics; HB's varies widely depending on what she wanted to do that day. But now we spend an hour over dinner swapping kid stories, comparing the goofy things the older kids said, sharing diapering disasters, fretting over parenting decisions we've made. It's new and different and delightful.

Since we want to someday raise a car-free family ourselves, I'm so thankful HB has this opportunity to practice her parenting skills in a context where she'll have the chance to figure out how to propel the kids to parks and museums and community centers by bike, by bus, and by foot. She's going to learn a lot.

We'll be an awesome parenting team someday.

High fives,
-MP

Sasha Says, ep. 4

"If my mom was a horse she would have shorter hair."

Singing me a song she composed (clearly on the spot): "I don't have any rights to get what I want, but I have needs, needs, needs."

"Do you know why I like Word Girl so much? Because I am Word Girl. But don't tell my parents."

"Ezra has laughing skill. And pooping skill."

Referring to the playbill/program brochure from a recent children's theatre show: "I got autographs on the flipper!"

Listening to an orchestral piece on the Classical music station: "This reminds me of country music."

Apropos of nothing: "You know what? Ezra was homeborn, but I was born in a birth center."

"When I grow up, I don't want to own a car. Cars are not as good for the environment." [context: Sasha and I have talked about how I choose not to own a car, and that I bike and bus everywhere.]

Hugs,
-MP

consistency & permanence

One of the things I always struggle with when I'm caring for other people's kids is aligning my "parenting" style with their parents' parenting styles. I know all the textbooks say to be consistent, that kids need consistency and rules and boundaries.

Sometimes this means grilling the parents extensively on their routines and approaches to various things and trying my damndest to replicate them. I just had a long conversation with Ezra's mom about sleep training and his bedtime routine, because the more of his sleeping cues I can replicate during naptime, the better he's likely to nap. And Sasha is a perpetual snacker, so we also had a conversation about how best to limit her afterschool snacking so that she'll actually eat dinner, without grooming her for an unhealthy relationship with food and control. (Lord knows she'll get enough of that from dominant culture.)

Sometimes consistency means being consistent to my own rules, even if they're (allegedly) different from the parents' rules. Real life example from a kid I babysat last summer:

Kid: "But my moms always let me have ice cream before dinner."
Me: "Well, your moms aren't here right now so we're going with my rules, and my rule is dinner before dessert."*

Most of the time, I feel like I straddle the line between these two approaches. After all, I figure these families hired me not to be a copy of themselves, but because they trust my judgment and they value having different adults in their kids' lives who will present them with different ways to see and interact with the world.

And some of the time, I resort to the old "pick your battles" standby.

I've written before about the tug-of-war that is Sasha and reading. This week after school, as usual, Sasha asked, "Can I watch a movie?" and I replied, "Yes. After you do your 15 minutes of reading homework." I offered different reading choices, and after waving aside my suggestions, Sasha sat up suddenly and said, "What if you write sentences about what you love about me, and then I read them?"

Good enough for me. "That's a great idea! Get me a pencil and some paper."

She returned with a notepad and a big black Sharpie. Little warning bells went off in my head. Is she usually allowed to use Sharpies? Do I really want to disturb this temporary reading truce for something as relatively unimportant as what writing implement we're using?

She uncapped the Sharpie and started drawing big hearts on the paper with lines in them for writing on. I tried to subtly hand her a ballpoint pen. Nothing doing. She carefully added stars around the borders of the page. Then little hearts that she meticulously filled in. She ate more pretzels. She made faces at the fussing Ezra.

Her stalling skills are truly something to be reckoned with.

Eventually she relinquished the paper long enough for me to write a few sentences. She added unnecessary periods to the end of every line, so that it read "I love. that Sasha. is smart." (I'm sure she's the next e. e. cummings.) With prodding, she haltingly, reluctantly read the first sentence. Four more iterations of that sentence and 12 minutes of reading time to go. She had gotten some accidental Sharpie ink on her hands at this point but nothing too major. Last week she and her friend had done full-body marker art (the phrase "We're gonna have to get naked for this" was reportedly heard from Sasha's room before a parent decided to investigate) and her parents had been pretty blase about it, so I wasn't unduly worried.

She busily traced all of the letters in each sentence; good, she's developing her writing skills, I thought. This is going well. 

While she was thus occupied, I turned around for 30 seconds to address Ezra's increasingly loud fussing, turned back, and Sasha had drawn long lines in Sharpie all up and down her hands, on both sides.

"Sasha. Do you know how Sharpies are different from regular markers?" I reprimanded gently.

"Yeah, Sharpies don't wash off."

I had just sent Sasha to the bathroom to wash as much of the ink as she could get off her hands when her mom walked in. I explained what had happened and fortunately, she's pretty laid back and didn't seem upset at all. She rolled her eyes and said, "She knows she's not allowed to use Sharpies."

Oh well. Kids are washable. And even Sharpie comes off eventually, thanks to our constantly regenerating skin cells.

High fives,
-MP

* = (Alternative answer: "Really? And when your moms get home, if I ask them if you're allowed to have ice cream before dinner, will they say that's true?" Usually this results in a sudden and creative revision of the initial statement, such as "Actually what I meant was that they let me pick out the flavor of ice cream I want before dinner, to eat after dinner.")