Iris was up some nights with nightmares and fears about halloween- for a couple of weeks prior to the big day. She was pretending to be brave, and interested and just processing ghosts and goblins and bats, but the truth came out at night- she was scared. But I will tell you what is really scary: this photo of Iris at the park. We were having our mama baby picnic and she suddenly had to poop. That is unusual for being out of the house, and I sure was glad I packed the travel potty!
So I went to take her picture since it was our first poop in the park and I am going to need some photos for my upcoming potty book. Zoom in and look what happened to her eyes. The camera took two photos in one. Eyes open and eyes closed. This truly freaks my freak. At first, I looked at the photo and thought “Why did her last caregiver draw on her eyelids?” Then I thought maybe she really was possessed after all (demons don’t need sleep, right?) and then I realized it was a double exposure.
In other news, we attempted our first day of Hands On Play Challenge. I know this challenge is sort of meant for moms who weren’t say, preschool teachers in a past life, like me. So I decided to step it up a little. We also had a little catching up to do. I decided I would step things up by doing each of the activities for the month in French, since Iris loves speaking French and I am floundering to stay one step ahead of her.
Iris had some plans of her own and let me know she was only interested in “child-led” learning 😉  She didn’t want to play the block game tower as big as herself: Les Cube Construction. She wanted to draw. Fine. She didn’t want to play “Forteresse” (build a fort). She wanted to pretend her doll was walking all over the house. Awesome.  Later in the day, I set up “Sauter Les Iles” (Jump the Islands), scattered of pieces of foam mat to jump from one to another. She loved the first part where we looked in books at photos of islands and water and pretended our fingers were jumping to and fro. But she would not “sauter” on the mats with me. She said. “non Mama. Iris fais do la lit. ” (I’m going to bed.)
So I at down and watched her lounge on the ottoman she had pretended was a bed. And then she found the Scrabble game. We stacked. We alpha betted. We spelled. We phonixed. And we carefully put each tile back in the bag. A girl after my very own heart.