Library cards...

You may remember that Anya has boxes that we check off with a check mark to use for reminding about listening to parents. The other day I made her a chore chart for the morning so it wasn’t all about me telling her to do this or do that, but that it was an inanimate object that requested it. As she ate breakfast and cleared her plate, I realized that I couldn’t use a check mark in the boxes because that was reserved for bad behavior. So, I quickly put an X in the first two boxes. She fed the dog and got dressed and wanted to fill in the boxes herself (I used words and clip art pictures so she could find the chores). I looked later at the boxes for the morning and she had filled them in with letters (and sounds from her reading lessons), because X is a letter. There was sh and t and p. All indicating she had finished her jobs. So funny how her mind processes all this new information!

At the end of August, Dave took Anya to the Ventura  County Fair and they went to the Beach Boys concert. She called me from Dave’s cell just before the concert started and was excited to tell me that the Beach Boys were going to actually come out live on the stage, it wasn’t just about listening to a CD!!

I came home from running errands yesterday and Scott was watching Anya swim in the pool. She had the rope we initially used to give her a visual clue about where the pool got deeper and was pulling it across the pool. This is what I heard, “Okay kids, stay on that side, go over there, it will be safe. Listen to me kids, listen to me!! WHIRRRRRR, (a sound she made for a whistle) time to get out kids. Do what I say, I am the library card.” Yes ladies and gentlemen, we are teaching Anya a different version of English. Okay, a few pieces of information that will help you understand.

1. Several months ago we went to the Thousand Oaks Library and got Anya a card with her picture on it. You would have thought it was her driver’s license she was so proud!

2. Anya will not call the library the library, it is called the library card.

3. I guess the card has an image of an oak tree on it for the city of Thousand Oaks.

4. Scott, her brother, is a lifeguard with the park and rec department of Thousand Oaks.

5. We have gone swimming at Scott’s public pool while he was on duty.

6. One day, Scott came out to go to work and was wearing a polo with the city logo on it. Anya exclaimed. “Hey! You have the library card on your shirt!”

So now, you can plainly see why playing “lifeguard”, which is a weird thing in and of itself, is called playing “library card”. If A=B and B=C then of course A=C. Yay! She’s ready for algebra!!

~Monica