Amazing Adventures of Adagirl

Ada wanted to be a bird. She has an extravagant dress with wisps of gauzy fabrics and a leopard print sash. Since it is adorned with a beautiful green feather bodice, we call it her bird dress. She puts it on and looks a little bit like a bird, a little bit like a harem girl. But we go with bird.

So she decided to wear her bird dress for Halloween. Easy for me–she wears the thing at home anyway!

Then Grammy and Granddaddy brought her two extravagant feathery masks from New Orleans. Ooh, la, la!

My mother brought me just such a mask from New Orleans after her visit years ago. So now we had three. That means David and I got to be the father and mother birds.

For all of our blue and green fanciness, according to Ada, we were sparrows.

Ada happily collects Halloween candy and trades it in for healthier candy that we buy from the health food store. Little chocolate balls in foil wrappers that look like the earth are her favorite. We also provided her with healthier m&ms, gummy bears, and lollipops, most in little baggies with twist ties from the bulk section. We don’t do a ton of candy and what there is gets eaten by the next day.

When Ada picked out a little orange wicker pumpkin from the thrift store and informed the clerk that she was going to use it for her trick or treat candy, he said, “You wont fit very much candy in that!”

When Ada showed it to her grammy, her grammy said, “Wow, you can fit lots of candy in that!”

Which is why we like her grammy better than the clerk at the Salvation Army, and why we’ve never invited him over for dinner.

Inspired by a childrens book, Ada and I decided to make an apple doll. We skinned an apple, carved a simple face into it, soaked it in lemon juice, then dried it out for a week. The head shrunk, the face wrinkled and it developed some definite character.

David and Ada made a body out of pipe cleaners, stuck tiny black beads in the eye holes, glued cottonballs to her head and cut up one of our cloth napkins for a dress.

Of course, our great grandmother doll needed a pipe cleaner guitar, and our friend Rachel came over and made her a pipe cleaner cat.

Ada named the doll Luppy. I think she named the cat Mouser. She didn’t name the guitar, but it’s possible that David did.

Little, nighttime-sky-loving girl bursts out with a heartfelt rendition of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star when we go out at night, then explains that “I just started singing that because I saw a star that was more beautiful than all the others.”

Me: Look at the full moon, Ada.
Ada: Yes, but my favorite one is when the Earth’s shadow is on the moon. It’s a crescent!

It’s almost unfair how easy it is to school this kid! I don’t have to explain to others my philosophies of unschooling, nor do I have to exercise any patience or faith myself, because Ada just turns around and knows academic stuff every day!

She can add now. My mom taught her what ‘plus’ means, but didn’t teach her any problems. Yet Ada is happily spouting sums:
1 plus 1 is 2!
2 plus 2 is 4!
4 plus 1 is 5!
5 plus 1 is 6!
5 plus 2 is 7!
5 plus 3 is 8!
5 plus 4 is 9!
and 5 plus 1 is 10!

What? Okay, I couldn’t quite just let that one lie so I pointed out that 5 plus 1 was already 6, and maybe she should see what she gets when she adds 5 fingers to 5 more fingers. We agreed on 10.

Ada made a card for me. She folded a piece of cardstock in half and cut the corners decoratively. She gave it to me, then said she would write her name on it. She wrote ‘Ada’ in careful, squiggly lines. Then she said she was going to write ‘love.’

I wrote LOVE on a separate paper and she copied it onto my card. So it says, simply and perfectly, LOVE ADA.

She’s enjoying writing letters now, which is always her own idea and I don’t know how she picks which letter she will write. Out of the blue it will be, “I’m going to write Rs.” Sometimes she makes such an announcement, then hesitates and asks me if I know how to write that letter. I say, “Yes, do you want me to write one?” And in this way she gets an example to copy without admitting she needed one.

Her letters are still not very controlled. But now that she is writing them, what better practice could there be? Her pictures have blossomed at the exact same time. While I would never belittle the worth of her abstract work, it is exciting to me that sometimes she draws and paints recognizable and intended objects. Like flowers that have stems, leaves, and petals. It seems that her fine hand coordination is coming in. Less painfully than teeth.

Five months since I’ve gotten here to put anything up. Sorry. So much has happened and it’s entirely inappropriate that the times when there’s lots worth reporting are the times when I’m too busy to report. We had a great visit from our friend Robby, who amazed me by forming a fast friendship with my none too open-minded daughter. Since then, she has been much friendlier and I have been so proud to have her responding politely and even enthusiastically to strangers (sometimes) and even approaching strangers to talk to them.

Ada: Hello!
Stranger: (surprised) Hello.
Ada: How are you?
Stranger: Fine. How are you?
Ada: Fine, thankyou.

Keep in mind that since I am always with Ada, I have had no particular concerns about stranger danger. I have told Ada that you need to be careful around anyone we don’t know because almost all people are nice and friendly but it’s always possible we’ll find a crazy one. I’ve told her that when she’s with me it’s always safe to talk to people. And I’ve encouraged her to be outgoing. I tell her that we create the world we live in and that the friendlier we are to people, the friendlier people will be and the friendlier the world will be.

As for what turned her social . . . who knows? Maybe it was Robby. Or my patient good example finally paid off.

And while we’re on the subject of social education, I almost told Ada how important it was that a black man had been elected president. I couldn’t quite do it. She doesn’t know we have different names for different skin colors (ie black or white). When she was little she described our skin color as brown (we are definitely a white family) and as she got older and her vocabulary became more nuanced she decided that we are tan. Whenever someone has referred to skin as white, she has immediately noticed that as mis-labeling. I mean, we’re not white.

Rambling . . .

She has never pointed out or asked about different shades of skin. I cannot speak for her as to whether she prefers any skin color to another aesthetically, or, like me, enjoys seeing the variety of it. As far as I can tell, it makes no difference to her and isn’t worth mentioning.

So, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t tell her that in our culture the color of skin is more significant than the color of eyes, that people have acted inappropriately based on those differences. That only this month did our country come to the point of civilization where we could elect a black man president.

Of course she will learn about these issues because she is part of this culture. Then I can say, remember when Barack Obama was elected president? It was an incredible milestone for our people because it meant we recognized character above skin color.

But not today. She already recognizes character above skin color.