"E" is for Elephant

     Mommy had a visit to the dentist today (whew, and what a doozy!), so Daddy dropped her off for a few hours, and then went over to Northpoint Mall with Madison for a little bit of fun.  Of course, we hung out at the Disney Store and looked around at Build-A-Bear, but soon we made our way back to the food court where Madison's eyes lit up.  

Oh yes, it was the carousel.  She's starting to like these carousels.

     She picked riding a horse first, but then saw the elephant and thought she'd give that a try next.  It's great how excited she is running around the mall, but when she gets on a carousel, her face gets all serious:  having fun can be a very serious thing.

     It was a pleasant time at the mall with Daddy and Madison - but I wish I could say the same for Mommy.  She had "one of those days" at the dentist, but the good news is that from this point on, all our visits to the dentist will be for routine check-ups.

     Daddy and Madison had lunch together at Chick-Fil-A, where Daddy has to hide the waffle fries in the bag so that she doesn't see them immediately.  That seems to be the only way she'll eat the chicken at all!  Seriously, once those waffle fries pop out, Madison is focused like a laser beam on decimating that little bag of fries.  And Daddy's pickles too!

     After picking up Mommy at the dentist, we all went over to a place called the "School Box" to check out some educational tools for around the house.  They had a pretty good selection of science, math, language arts, social studies - and other materials.  Mommy was looking for a safer pair of scissors for younger hands.  She found them, while Madison and Daddy played around with the train sets in the middle of the store.

     This week, as they used to say on Sesame Street, is sponsored by the letter "A."  Mommy has been focusing on one letter at a time with Madison, and she seems eager to learn a bit.  In fact, we picked up a Dr. Seuss book of the alphabet today as well.  We have a few others related to the alphabet, but Dr. Seuss is a favorite author of hers.  In fact, Madison and Daddy read that together in the car this afternoon.  

     Just yesterday, Daddy printed out the coloring sheets with the letter "A" for her, and a few other things that start with "A."  No, but not "aardvark."  Or "antidisestablishmentarianism."

     Also, Mommy has decided to work with Madison on drawing straight lines.  Daddy has printed out a few unique worksheets that give her a line to trace, that goes from a chipmunk to a tree, or from an octopus to the ocean.  That sort of thing.

CHIPMUNK - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  > TREE

OCTOPUS - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - > OCEAN

DENTIST - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - > BIG BILL

      The big question, of course is this:  Is she LEFT- or RIGHT-handed?  We still don't quite know.  She uses her left hand to eat with more often than the other, and yet when she uses a crayon she tends to favor her right hand.  So it's still in the air right now.

     It was a quiet, but pleasant day.  We had dinner at home (Mommy had soup), and afterwards, we watched "Cinderella 2" in the play room.  Didn't like that one as much as part three.  Daddy is getting to be quite the expert on the Disney princesses.