100 Eye Monster

This may look like some sort of apocalyptic Howard Finster folk art, but it is in fact a creation of Madison's, the "100 Eye Monster."  Tomorrow is a big day at school, the 100th day of school.  To celebrate, students are invited to bring in 100 of something, or have 100 of something to count at least.  We briefly thought about stars on a black poster board, and Mommy's original idea was a good one:  100 gum balls in a gum ball machine (with small pom-poms as the gum balls).  Unfortunately that didn't work.  But, we did notice a bag of 150 various-sized googly eyes.  And that's when our monster came to life!

There were some other homework assignments related to the number 100.  She filled out a sheet of paper, answering questions like this:  "100 ___________ would be  a problem."  Her answer for the blank:  "cats."  Yes, she came up with that on her own.  Very wise answer, Madison!

If she had 100 dollars, by the way, the thing she would buy would be new shoes.

Anyway, it was the busy day for Madison, as right after school we all went to piano together.  And then it was time for ballet as well - we were moving fast from place to place.  Piano is going rather well - we're learning chords, and Madison seems to "get it."  She gets distracted by looking at others, but when she focuses on the task at hand, she seems to do rather well most of the time.  She does get stage fright though. Sometimes she blanks out, but that happens to all of us.  The key is practicing things over and over again - which we've been doing a lot of lately.

It was another bitterly cold sort of day, one where Daddy did most of his work from the house.  He's still stick - which is pretty much what Madison had.  This head cold lasts about a week.  Fortunately, Madison seems to be on the tail end of it, getting better each day.  Last night, she didn't cough at all after she was asleep.  We were very grateful for that.

We're also very grateful that there isn't a real 100 Eye Monster around.  Just sayin'.