Brought Sahara some new books from the book shop here today. They had a classic Winnie the Pooh story collection, which may or may not have been more for me than Sahara. Also found a wonderful book called "Fancy Nancy" that seemed right up Sahara's alley. They share the curly hair and extravagant dress style. There was also "The Ultimate Alphabet" book, which I glanced through briefly and thought it seemed like it would be quite good for her vocabulary. It was a long tram ride home so I was looking through it with Di and decided that perhaps it would actually be good for our vocabulary, and that we may need to be equipped with a dictionary and thesaurus while reading it. Here's one of the easier pages. I think the "S" page had 1,122 "S" words to find. In total there are 7,777 words to identify. To read the page click on the picture and it will let you see the larger image.
We were walking home after picking Sahara up and I asked how her day had been.
"Ugh! I'm really mad at Amira." she replied with a cross little look on her face.
"What did she do?"
"I don't want to talk about it!" she snapped, her eyebrows knitting even closer together.
"Why??"
"Because!" After a short pause, still frowning "I only like Lilah."
"But what did Amira do?"
"I said I don't want to say it!"
"But why? Just tell me."
"Ughh! I have told you I don't want to talk about it 10 times already!"

I still have no idea what Amira did. They're usually best friends. Pre-school drama.

Posting this while Sahara agonizes over the last 4 mouthfuls of dinner so she'll be allowed a pupcake before bed. When asked what she wanted to do today she said she just wanted to do stickers. Her sticker book is in dutch, and something her and Bompi do together, and as he was working, I finally managed to get a second plan for the day out of her(although she also talked Bompi into almost an hours worth of stickering), and she decided painting would be a good idea. I said I'd get her new paints if she came down to the garage with me to hold the light while I painted Marco's computer case, and she reluctantly agreed. We came back upstairs afterwards and after 2 hours of waiting for her to get dressed we headed out to the shop. Which didn't have paints. So we decided to go see if the other stores on the shopping street were open even though Bompi had said they weren't. I wasn't convinced a country that calls itself first world would really not have shops open on a Sunday. They weren't. So we went back to the supermarket and got baking supplies instead.

We went to the zoo yesterday. Wasn't so fun. Sahara wanted to look at the dead rodents in the bird cages that they feed them with. We did manage to catch the seal show again though, and then visited them afterwards when they were swimming around in the outside pool. Had McDonalds for lunch, and they had these god awful madagascar toys that sing when you shake them in the slightest. Sahara was lucky enough to get King Julien who sings "I like to move it, move it" three times in a row whenever he's bumped. The little girl at the next table had one too and her and Sahara jumped up and down together shaking them, and me and her mother exchanged long suffering looks. I was actually woken last night by the same King Julien being shaken close to my head, but he promptly disappeared with Sahara back to her bed on threats of violence.

Nikki and Marco were here on Friday. Sahara built a tent out of her pink clothing draws by unzipping the bottoms and lining them up. After she'd been in the completely silent for a while, we decided to check on what she was doing. If you have kids, you'll know there's a very big difference between the silence of your child playing happily and the silence of your child holding their breath while doing something they know they shouldn't. It's quite scary whenever you realize you can hear that difference and it's the latter. Nikki started to unzip the bottom draw and was met with a shriek of outrage. Marco decided this would be worth photographing and got out his cellphone camera to capture the moment with. I thought this shot captured the moment quite well. =) There's probably something quite wrong with me that is responsible for how hilarious I find Sahara's outrage sometimes. She certainly thinks so. Me laughing in the middle of her tantrums isn't generally the response she's looking for.

We were at the dinner table with Grandma the night before and Sahara announced that when she grew up, Bompi was going to be her man.
"Excuse me?! He's my man!" interjected Grandma
"You'll be buried" Sahara said in an offhand way.
"WHAT?!" exclaimed Grandma
"You'll be buried." she repeated. "You'll be my man when I grow up won't you Bompi?" Sahara turned to Bompi.
She didn't seem very deterred by his assurance he was in fact Grandma's man.

("Man" in Dutch is "husband", and "Bompi" is "Grandad")

I was linked to a video of my favouritest (favouritest equal with Katie of course) little cousin in the world bungee jumping today!



Sahara watched it with me, and promptly asked

"Can I do that too? When I go back to NZ?"

I'll think about it after she gets her nose pierced like Nikki's, which will be just after NEVER.

Sahara had been threatened all through last week with a phone call being made to Chiara and Guilia's Mum to cancel their weekend visit. Despite one fake phone call being made one morning during school preparations (or lack thereof), they turned up this Sunday, dressed beautifully in princess dress ups. Sahara promptly disappeared to her room to also change into a dress. They spent quite some time playing hide and seek, which they really are terrible at. They had a total of two hiding places they alternated between; behind the door and between and wardrobe and window. The predictability didn't curb their enthusiasm when finally found however. Chiara is the most wonderfully expressive little girl I've ever seen. I couldn't press the capture button on the camera quickly enough a couple of times because her face changes so quickly, but this was one especially good look she gave Sahara when Sahara was saying something especially silly. I think a lot of people feel like giving Sahara this look often but I haven't seen anyone pull it off as successfully as Chiara.

Sahara has started a sticker chart for good behavior. She managed to lose her first days sticker while in the shop buying them, so it wasn't really off to a good start but we're now up to three days of no hitting, no swearing and getting ready in the morning. She's quite proud of her stickers and last night, not long after I'd fallen asleep, I was woken by a voice close to my head.

"Don't take my sticker while I'm asleep"

".....................I won't. Goodnight"
"In fact, don't come anywhere near my bed while I'm asleep" (her sticker chart is on the wall above her bed)
"Fine. Go away."
"Make sure you don't"
"If you don't disappear in the next 2 seconds your whole chart if going in the rubbish"
"OK, OK. You don't need to be so angry"

It's been a few weeks of cold weather and grouchy 4 year olds, so I haven't been in the mood to post much. We headed to the beach in Holland one especially cold weekend a couple of weeks ago. The whole beach is actually frozen, although it doesn't look too bad in the photo. Sahara collected shells and talked Bompi into carrying the bag for her after I quit the position of bag carrier due to loss of all feeling in my hands. In the car on the way there I noticed her scrunching up her wee eyes as she looked out the window. I asked her what she was doing.

"The buildings are following me"
"....what?"
"I have special eyes, so the buildings are following me"
"Oh... right"

I still don't know what that was about. We've had a similar conversation on walks home after dark where she scrunches her eyes up and looks at the street lights and tells me she can see stars everywhere because she has special eyes, but I just don't know about the buildings.

She started seeing a speech therapist once a week at school for her "k" sounds. Two lessons and she's improved heaps. Instead of "Futt you, I'm not getting futting dressed so just futt off!" in the mornings it's now " FuCK you, I'm not getting fuCKing dressed so just fuCK off!". I'm considering changing the mustard to tobasco sauce and seeing if that improves her foul language, but I'm not too hopeful.

I've started Dutch classes again. Sahara's quite proud, but I really do hate learning languages. I was being emo about going back at the dinner table and telling my Mum I was so miserable I was just going to go to bed, cut myself, then cry myself to sleep. I hadn't thought Sahara was paying attention but she cut in at this point.
"Would you like me to go get you a knife from the kitchen then? No? So you're just being silly so don't say it".
Put in place by a four year old. =(

We were cleaning her room today and Sahara was meant to be putting her soft toys back on her bed after I'd made it, and was looking for excuses not to put them all back up, as there's quite a large number that live on the end of her bed.
"I think I like them better on the floor"
"No. Pick them up"
"I don't need them all. Can we send some to those kids?(in Gaza)"
"Maybe. We'll talk about it when they're back on your bed"
*a muttered something I don't think I was meant to hear*
"This isn't mine. It's yours. It can go on your bed" she said handing me an Eeyore toy
"I gave it to you"
"But it was for your first birthday present!"
"It wasn't... It was for my 16th"
"Why would you get toys when you were 16?" she asked, giving me a funny look
"I like Eeyore" I said a bit defensively
"When you're old?"
"Yes... when I'm old"
"Well. It was for you 16th brithday! You can't give it away"
"I don't like the person who gave it to me anymore"
"Who gave it to you?"
"Leith"
"Why don't you like her anymore?"
"Cause she's a jerkface. And she's a he!"
"No. She"
"He" I corrected her again
"She. Leith's a girls name"
"He! HE! It's not a girls name. You're thinking of Lisa"
"She. Leith is a girls name as well. It's she"
"It's he! I think I'd know. I lived with him for 3 years!"
"You'd think you would know then, wouldn't you. So why don't you?"
"...!!" (I stomped my foot and left the room)

Sahara(a.k.a Curly Grrrl) featured on V-grrrls blog as a muse for her 11 year old daughter today.
We miss them quite muchly and Sahara has photos of her and Pony on her bedroom wall still.

We were playing some youtube videos the other night of songs my Mum used to sing to me when I was little, and got to playing some of the music I listened to while pregnant to see if Sahara remembered. Pantera may not have been the best choice, as these pictures of her singing along in my stolen hat with her drinking straw microphone indicate. Perhaps she can rock out with you on your drums, Katie, next time she's over.

A week of snow and minus zero temperatures. In fact it's been insanely cold since Christmas day. We went out to see Madagascar 2 at the movies on boxing day and Sahara, insistent she was wearing her new dress from Nana Knopp despite the freezing weather, wore that, stripped thermals from Aunty Ash(that were also almost impossible to drag her out of, probably luckily given how cold it was), hiking boots, her little denim jacket, and a striped scarf from Grandmas last visit to Turkey. It was quite the outfit. "I like to moom it, moom it" is now sung even more frequently than it was when she'd just seen the first Madagascar, accompanied by her funny little bum wiggling dance. It may not sound that funny, but I end up in hysterics every time she breaks into song and dance. She also makes up her own little songs, which are quite funny to listen to, especially when she's been told off. After she's been told she can't watch TV for example, you might hear something a long the lines of "Nobody loves me, They just don't care, They don't want to be my friends, I'm so sad, But I am a beautiful princess..." sung in a sad little voice coming out of the hallway where she stands in front of the mirror, singing and practising sad faces.

I came out of the lounge today after sending her to start getting ready for bed to find her posing rather dramatically in front of the same mirror wearing hiking boots, stockings, a little fairy skirt and wings. "Get ready! Set! Go!" she shouted just as I came out and immediately took off at a fast paced, high kneed run, followed very shortly after by a thump, thock, splat as she ran directly into the wall at the end of the hall after failing to turn the corner, flicked off a shoe that went flying into the wall, and then landed with a splat on her bedroom floor.

I'd been trying to get her attention earlier in the day while I was bored doing dishes.
"Sahara"
"Hey Sahara"
"Oi Sahara!"
"Sahara you can have a lolly if you come talk to me"
"What do you want?"
"Would you still love me if I'd named you Papaya instead of Sahara?"
She thought about this for a minute. "You can call me Triangle if you want."
"What??"
"Triangle. Princess Triangle I think, actually"
"Princess Triangle Papaya?"
"Don't be stupid."
"Whatever Sahara"
"Triangle. Princess Triangle" she corrected me firmly.

We went out the day it snowed to attempt to make a snow man, but failed because the snow was too powdery to stick together. The photo is actually what it looks like - her stuffing her gloves with snow. I could have put the camera away and stopped her, but she was explaining a rather interesting theory as to why that would actually keep her hands warmer.