magnet tile castle, owls

 

Zoe wanted to build a castle for her "number friends".  I thought it was so great that I can be one of the "let's try to make/sew/bake/build - it - ourselves" moms, instead of buying it. But Zoe has come to expect me to be able to make anything that she wants, and when I don't want to make something, like a ballet costume for a unicorn, she really does not understand why.

So one thing that she loves to do is to make things out of paper, which is great. Thank goodness Costco has excellent deals on boxes of white printer paper. And I stock up on markers when they are BOGO at Toys R Us. Zoe started with "letter friends" which are all of the letters of the alphabet with arms & legs and faces. I have to cut them all out. She plays with them like paper dolls. Then she made "number friends": zero through ten. She has made all of the planets, with comets and shooting stars, and asteroids. She made a set of birds. She made bats, pumpkins, and ghosts.  She made all the shapes. Last night she made owls. I drew them and she colored them. And then I cut them out. As she was falling asleep last night she said that she wanted to make all of the foods.

 

 

Zoe has been wearing this ballet outfit that Nana Jo sent last Christmas. It fits her perfectly right now. And she LOVES that people ask her if she is a ballerina. I am trying to find an affordable, convenient ballet class for her. They have some at the Lynnwood Rec Center but are usually full.

 

She picked some leaves and taped them to Uda as a Halloween costume [above]. Zoe cannot wait to go trick or treating. She wants to be a ghost. But she has a very specific idea of what this ghost costume will look like and she is insisting that I make it. She draws a line in the air with her finger and explains that it will have "bumps on the bottom". I offered to buy a costume at a Halloween store, but she does not want to buy one. She asks if it's time to go trick or treating all day every day. I keep explaining that we have to wait until October 31st. She brought out some blank paper and I asked her what she was going to do with it and she said she was going to make a calendar and I asked why and she said, in a loud & exasperated voice - "so I know what I'm doing!" It was hilarious.