Adelaide the storyteller

Every night for as long as I can remember we have been telling Adelaide stories before bed and naptime. Sometimes long, intricate epics in fact. Somewhere along the way Ade has learned the standard arcs and gimmicks of most stories and often prompts us during our telling for new twists and suggestions for how she thinks the story should go. The other day at dinner though she told us a full story of her own. Unfortunately, I can't recreate the sound of her voice or hand gestures while she told the story, increasingly excited as she got into her own imagination and as she saw the glee her story was brining her parents...

Once upon a time there were tiny little critters who captured me and were trying to eat me! But, don't worry, I escaped. I got inside a rocket ship and flew to outer space. I had to fly faster than the little critters. You know how I knew they wanted to eat me? They had a fork in one hand and a knife in the other hand and were coming after me [gesture of hungry hands holding utensils]! Oh, but when I tried to escape, I was in trouble. One of the critters was hanging onto my space ship, so I had to go even faster to fly away from him. Then they were back on their planet and I was safe.

Ryan and I were in tears over this. Later that night, she elaborated and told me more. Apparently their planet has cheese for the ground and blueberries for the sky. And, what Astronaut Adelaide didn't know was that when she had gotten out on there planet, she has stepped on a leaf. That leaf is what the critters eat, so when they looked like they were coming after her, it was really only to get the leaf, which is their food. Phew. No one had ever been in danger after all.

Also the other night out of the blue, she told me, "The books that have the thing on the front of them won the Caldecott award. Kids books that have the best pictures inside them win the Caldecott award, like Wild Things and the Pigeon book. I think Bad Kitty should win a Caldecott award." She now wants me to print the whole list of Caldecott award winning books for her so she can collect them. Apparently she asked her teacher at school about the badges on the front of some of the books, and was informing me about it.

When I went to pick her up from school the other day, she had just gotten a new piece of paper, and she told me she HAD to make a drawing. So she sat down and promptly drew a dog which had a circle for one eye and an X for the other. I asked about his eyes, and she said, "Oh, this is a stuffed dog, not a real dog, so he has buttons for eyes." I said, "Oh, well then to draw a button you should do a circle and and X inside the circle." I should have known better, as she quickly schooled me, "No, no. This one is the button that is still on, and this is what it looks like when one eye already fell off!" I have no idea if this is actually as clever as it seems to me, but I was really impressed that she was drawing not only stuffed dogs, which is quite an abstraction, but that she was drawing them to some imperfect image in her mind.

Enjoy this artistic pic Ade took of her beloved Lotso with her iPod: