The Next Taylor Swift?

Charlotte is currently writing a country song. I think. It involves a lot of "oh oh oh" and horses and cowboys. Though Matt is the one who started her and he spelled it as "oooow" which is annoying to me. Charlotte also made up her own lined paper, which is sort of hilarious. I also think I need to teach her about rough drafts and final copies, since she is getting stressed out about putting words in the wrong place.

note that the caption "title" is the largest print on the whole paper. 

Transcript of rough draft (spacing my own, spelling preserved):

"Riding Through The Town" 

Oooooow the horses run in the desert
Ooow ooow ooow
The cowboys ride on the horses
Ooow ooow ooow 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 and 8 horses
Ooow Ooow Ooow
The towns people saw the horses
and they

So far, so brilliant, right?

Notes From Today

Charlotte told me today that when she grows up, she wants to be a "rescue person." She wants to live near the ocean and have a swimming dog with a life belt to rescue people from shipwrecks. I think this was inspired by The Bravest Woman in America by Marissa Moss. It's the story of a girl named Ida Lewis, whose father was a lighthouse keeper. Ida loves the sea and the lighthouse, and learns from her dad all about lighthouse upkeep, and learns to row and becomes a strong rower. Her father becomes sickly, and she takes over the care of the lighthouse. She rescues some people, and becomes a hero. Charlotte is super-inspired by this, and is telling me that when she's 8, we need to move near the sea so she can work on her rescue person training.

Last Friday, for Family Movie Night, we watched Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. Charlotte has been interested in Star Wars for a while now - some kids in her class are into it and she's seen some of the Lego sets in the Lego aisle at Target. Matt and I figured that she's old enough to handle most of it, and, worst-case-scenario, we'd turn it off mid-movie. Charlotte ended up really liking the movie, and has been talking about it ever since. And asking questions about the whys and wherefores and what happens next? Today when I picked her up from school, I could hear her calling to one of her friends, "Princess Leia, Princess Leia! We need to get back to the Mirrenium Falcon!" Her teacher was cracking up.

"Guess who saw Star Wars on Friday?" I said, rhetorically.

"She's been so funny! She told me she saw 'the ORIGINAL Star Wars.'"

That's my girl.

QOTD: Ambitious

C:  I think I could be a brilliant artist when I grow up.

Mama:  I think that's a great idea.

C:  Because you always like my art.

Mama:  I really do.

C:  And my art could be in a picture museum and I could be the richest girl in the world.

Mama:  What does that mean, richest girl in the world?

C:  It means everyone knows I am brilliant.

QOTD: The Director

Charlotte, in a tone of indignation, "Daddy, you're improvising!"

(playing a tightly scripted scene where Charlotte is Captain Hook and Matt is the Tick Tock Croc)

Is this how Jane Fonda started? Because I'm okay with it, if that's the case.

Today's instance of hilarity ensuing had to do with my yoga mat. For some bizarre reason, possibly Sesame Street induced, Charlotte calls it an "octagon." Anyway, the last two days Charlotte has been very intrigued by the yoga mat, and asking me to unroll it so she can use it. Yesterday we did some Winnie the Pooh up-and-down excersizes, and she kept bending over and "go sideways." Today she turned into a tiny Aerobisize instructor:

"Up and down, Mama, up and down!"
"Do jumping! Jump, Mama!"

I showed her a few more things, some arm and neck stretches, hip twists, and up-to-the-sky stretches. This so delighted her that I actually had to roll up the yoga mat and put it away so that we could stop "stretchin'" and move on with our lives. My sister Nicole and my nephew G came over for a visit, and I told her about it. Nicole thought it sounded so funny that she wanted a demonstration. "Good luck with that," I said. Auntie Nicole spent the next five minutes at the whims of the tiny dictator.

"Onnie Nicole, uppa sky! Down, uppa sky!"
"Stretchin' you arms, Onnie, stretchin' you arms!"

Nicole then showed Charlotte a couple modified yoga moves (one is that you hold lay on your stomach and hold yourself up on your arms so that you look like a seal) that she used to do with her third-grade class, and Charlotte ate them up. Charlotte also started doing "fallin' down," which means lay on your back and breathe deeply. This is the point at which I realize that Charlotte must have seen a yoga class on TV somewhere and has taken it upon herself to teach us that we must all have quiet meditation at the end of our workout.

This is seriously one of the randomest funniest things that Charlotte has started doing in a list of random funny things - but there's this kind of creepy undercurrent of how just seeing something a couple times on TV has made this deep impression on her. I'm really struggling with making sure that she watches less TV vs. getting more work done vs. Charlotte begging to watch "mo dye-saur twain." It's probably the singlemost guilty conscience thing I have going on.

Well, that and all the goldfish crackers.