September 13, 2011

Crafty Boogie

One day last week the Boogie was going about business as usual, which means that she narrates everything she does and interjects "Honey, look" into every other sentence. I was going about my own business as usual, which means that I respond "oh that's nice" "oh wow" "good job honey" absentmindedly while doing my chores. So when she told me that she wanted to make a stethoscope I didn't think anything of it.

She made her way into the laundry room and found a paper cup. "Honey, can I have this?"
"Oh, sure, yes that's fine, go ahead," I said from the sink where I was washing dishes.
"Well," she said, "I just need two more."
"Okay, that's fine," I replied.

She was quiet for another minute or two then popped out of the laundry room with a pipe cleaner from the VBS craft stash that I hadn't managed to put away yet. "Honey, can I have this pipe cleaner?" I glanced over my shoulder and nodded and went back to the dishes. "Well, can I have two?" she persisted.
"Sure, you can have two," I answered, not even turning around. I barely noticed when she carried everything to the dining room table.
"Honey," she called, "I need some star stickers. And markers. Can I please have some stars and markers?"
I dried my hands and found them for her.

She occupied herself decorating the outside of the cups with stars. She write her initial on the bottom of each cup. After several minutes she called me again, "Well, Honey, I just need some help. Can you help me please?" I dried my hands again and went over to her. "I just need to poke a hole here," she pointed to the bottom of a cup. I got a pencil and jabbed a hole where she was pointing. "Now this one," she slid another cup over to me.
"Now I can do this!" and she pushed one end of a pipe cleaner into one of the cups. I twisted the end so it wouldn't slide back out and did the same thing with the other cup and another pipe cleaner.

I need to state that at this point I still had no idea what she was trying to do. Clueless, much? I got distracted by something and a couple of minutes later she called me back to look. She had poked a hole in the bottom of the third cup and pushed the other ends of the two pipe cleaners into that cup. A light bulb went on over my head. "Oh a stethoscope!" I exclaimed. I twisted the ends so they wouldn't slide out. The Boogie's grin was from ear to ear. "Yes! A stethoscope!" She picked it up and held two cups to her ears. Her face fell. "It doesn't work," she said sadly, "I need another hand." I cut a small slit in each cup and slid the ends of a headband into them and it worked!
I was so impressed that she thought of this all by herself and figured out how to do it without any input from me. What a smart kid!

3 comments:

Rhonda said...

I never doubted she was smart! She's also very clever.

Kali said...

That's cute and very impressive!

Dear Abbi said...

Love it!! She reminds me of my Gracie! She made dollhouse furniture out of her daddy's old business cards and a LOT of tape. :)