Annacdotes 29

in an outfit I termed "floral camo"

1. Because Anna has a summer birthday, she got to celebrate it early at school. (Yes, this is an old Annacdote.) Each kid in her class drew her a picture, and then her teacher made a little booklet out of them. When we were looking through it later that day, I saw one picture that included a boy's name and his phone number. I was a little surprised at this and asked her why he included his number. She said, "Remember? That's the boy that has a crush on me!" We giggled about it for a minute, and then I said, "What do you think he would do if you called him?" Shocked and a little embarrassed, she said, "I don't even know! He might ask me to go out!" I asked Anna what she would say to that, and she said, "I would probably say, 'Don't you know we're only kids?'"

2. In a prayer: "Thank you for giving children the opportunity to learn fascinating facts and interesting things about the world and sometimes adults but mostly children. Thank you for that."

3. My mother was talking about our family one day and she said that, except for a few aches and pains, we have all been blessed with really good health. We talked about this for a few minutes, and then Anna chimed in loudly with, "Yeah, and just be glad we're not on the Mayflower with all the disease and stuff." She offers such a fresh perspective.

4. One morning, Anna tried several ways of negotiating her way out of making her bed. First she said she was planning on taking a nap later, so she'd just like to be able to get back in her bed. (She wouldn't take a nap in a million years, by the way.) I said she still needed to make her bed and if she did, in fact, take a nap, she could lay on top of her bed with a blanket. Then she said that would mess up her bed during the nap, but I stood my ground. After a few more failed attempts, she said, "Fine! You win this round, [then cryptically] but I'll be back."

5. In a prayer: "Thank you for the past, thank you for the future, and thank you for this exact second." She likes to cover her bases.

a picture Anna submitted to an art contest, to give you a little context for her artist statement below

amazingness

6. Saying goodnight one evening, I hugged Anna and told her I loved her and would forever. She circled my face with her hand several times and said dramatically with cool echo effects, "I will love you after after after time ends."

7. These next three happened all in the same day, so they go together:

First, Anna paused partway through eating her dessert and started reading the Sunday comics that were sitting next to her. After a minute, I noticed the pause and asked if she was full. She said, "Sort of. I just gotta, you know, let it ... 'reader's.....digest.'"

Then later, I let her have some salt water taffy just before she was supposed to get ready for bed. I told her I'd let her eat one if it made her quick, as if it were a pill for speediness. Happily unwrapping the taffy, she said, "Actually, it might make me tarry." I stared at her, frozen in awe for a moment, and she said, "Wait, does 'tarry' mean get distracted and wander around?" Yes, yes it does. And totally Sunday appropriate, I thought.

Lastly, she had been playing with this strip of fabric all evening, wearing it like a shawl, and as we knelt down to pray, she wrapped it around me and tied me tightly to her. Totally deadpan, she said, "This is to make sure no one gets squirmy. Especially YOU."

8. Practicing the piano one day, Anna made a mistake. Overdramatically ashamed, she covered her eyes and said, "Shame on me! I'm not opening my eyes to see the beautiful world ever again. Unless it's a dump."

9. When Anna gets asked what she learned at school that day, her response is often "nothing," which doesn't really make for an awesome conversation. So one day, the question was changed to, "What would you like to be learning?" She came up with three responses: "Magic, although that's not possible, levitation, and my part for the primary program."

10. As I was doing my best to mimic the opera singer we happened to be listening to (and my version was not half bad, by the way), Anna groaned and said, "I wish I didn't have a mother who sang opera." I laughed and said, "That's the best kind of mother there is! A fun one!" Then she said in a sincere lament, "Man, I just wish I had a normal life!"

She lost one of her front teeth at the beginning of November . . . 

. . . and then the second one came out three weeks later. In true Anna fashion, she works very hard on her enunciation now so that she doesn't have a lisp, which is too, too bad. I think she'd be adorable with a lisp, but it would go against this old-soul image she's developed.