Missing noses, aggressive geese, outside the box thinking, and impressive Houdini skills

Today's blogpost is going to be a series of vignettes.  We've collected some pretty good TerraDactyl stories this week.  First up:  DH stealing TerraDactyl's nose.  DH frequently "steals" TerraDactyl's nose, or ears, or other random body parts.  She usually "snatches it out of his hand" and puts it back where it goes.  But the other day, DH's hand was out of her reach, so she just put her hands over her nose and said "I'm giving myself a new TerraDactyl nose."  It was so funny and DH and I really had no idea how to react to that.  

We went to the library the other day to pick up our held books, but TerraDactyl wanted to look for a Curious George book.  We got distracted in the Children's section and ended up finding some 5-minute Mickey Mouse stories and I don't think TerraDactyl has allowed us to read her any other books since then (that's what she's reading above).  It's been like a week.  She really loves Mickey Mouse.  It's amazingly disturbing just how good Disney is at making characters that kids obsess over.  

While we were at the library, we walked around the ponds to look at the ducks.  (I love our library.  It's really cool.)  We saw a bunch of ducks and birds.  TerraDactyl was super excited to look for all the birds we could find.  At one point we found 8-10 ducks napping in the sunshine.  She asked me to sing them a duck song.  I managed to come up with a duck song (not to be confused with a duhk song - they're a great bluegrass/folk band, I love them).  Anyways, as I'm crouched there singing "Five little ducks went out to play" to these sleeping ducks, about a dozen Canada Geese swim to the shore and walk up to us.  Like RIGHT up to us.  I stood up and was nudging them away from TerraDactyl with my foot they were so close.  I finally convinced TerraDactyl to keep walking, but these Geese just stalked us the rest of the way around the pond.  It was kind of nuts.  Fortunately, nothing worse happened.  I was trying to stay calm because I didn't want to freak TerraDactyl out and give her a goose phobia/trauma or something.  But I was quite pleased when we finally lost the geese (like 10 minutes later).  

Back to Mickey, one good thing about Mickey is that Mickey Mouse's Clubhouse might actually be helping TerraDactyl's problem solving skills.  In the episodes they always encounter a problem and they call for their Mouseketools "Oh Toodles!" and then have to choose which tool will help solve their problem.  When TerraDactyl comes across a problem in real life she'll say "Maybe a mouseketool will help us".  So then I ask which tool she thinks could help and she usually comes up with a pretty reasonable answer:  A key to open a locked door, water to clean something, etc.  Although, sometimes she says "a handy fishing rod", which is literally a fishing pole with a Mickey Mouse hand on the end instead of a hook.  Which isn't exactly an actual object, but it would be useful in a lot of situations.  

The other day I was trying to mow the yard while TerraDactyl played outside.  She was doing a really great job of entertaining herself.  A few times she ran up to me and asked me to kiss her hand or knee, but she was still upbeat.  I'm about half way done with the yard when I looked around and TerraDactyl wasn't in the yard.  I started looking for her and poked my head inside to see if DH had seen where she went and I found her just inside the back door with her chair, bubbles, T-ball set up, Riley's chuck-it thrower & ball, and her giant stick that she pretends is a fishing rod.  She'd just dragged all this stuff into the house.  I ended up having to lock us outside to keep her from dragging all this stuff right back into the house.  It was nearly 5, so I figured DH would come looking for us soon, and if he had to work late we could always go knock on his office door and make faces at him until he let us in.  

There was an airshow at our local airport this weekend.  Friday night it went late - like 9pm.  I was all worried about TerraDactyl going to sleep.  I was not worried about Riley.  Riley does fine with fireworks and even guns.  But Riley got really worked up over the airplanes, while TerraDactyl fell asleep no problem.  So we tried to take dog friendly adventures this weekend to keep Riley from freaking out.  We went to the dog park where Riley had a blast (of course).  TerraDactly also really liked it.  They have an agility course for the dogs, but TerraDactyl tried it all out.  

After a while though, TerrDactyl wanted to explore other things.  So we ran all the way around the bases in the baseball field.  And below is how TerraDactyl wanted to "play second base" (I think she was just covering the base in dirt).  Sorry Opa, I don't think your granddaughter will be much of a baseball player either...  There was also a kids' park there and TerraDactyl had a blast playing on all the toys while we waited for Riley to tire himself out.  

DH and I usually alternate who sleeps upstairs to make sure we both get enough sleep.  TerraDactyl is doing a lot better at sleeping through the night, but I've just been super tired lately and need a lot of sleep.  On one of my "on duty" nights (I'm sleeping in the room next to TerraDactyl) I managed to sleep in until nearly 8am.  It was amazing.  I was laying in bed expecting to hear TerraDactyl playing in the living room or something, but I don't hear anything.  So I texted DH to see if he knew if she was up yet.  Instead DH responds as follows:

        :-|  Last night doesn't count as my downstairs night.  She climbed into my bed with all her friends.

Apparently, she climbed over the baby gate with all four of her Mickey & friends stuffed animals and carried them downstairs to climb into bed with DH and chatter at him at 6am or so.  I thought this was pretty funny.  DH did not find it nearly so amusing.  

I don't know if you can see in the picture above, but about half a dozen or so of my asparagus are missing their heads.  I would blame a pest, or even Riley (he's been known to bite the heads off asparagus in the past, but he's never done it at this house), but then TerraDactyl comes running up to me to proudly show me how she's helping to pick asparagus.  She would not relinquish them for me to take them inside to wash though.  I found them the next day in the wheelbarrow covered in dirt.  I'm trying to teach her to harvest the entire asparagus, but we'll see how successful I am.  I don't want to discourage her from helping, but I would like to actually eat some of our asparagus this year.  

We're still running into weird glitches of unexpected literal interpretations when communicating.  The other day TerraDactyl requested corn on the cob.  I had to cook it first, so when I gave it to her, I warned her that it needed to cool down.  She waited patiently for a while, and when she asked again, I checked it and said:  "It's still a little hot, but if you want to take a bite, you can see if you can stand it."  TerraDactyl responds "I can stand it."  And then she immediately does the following:  

TerraDactyl has decided that she likes pickles.  She requested a pickle picnic today.  She keeps wiping at her elbow because she had pickle juice dripping all the way down her arm.