Christmas
Miranda and Zoë got up too early (well, too early for my liking, anyway) and dashed out into the family room to see what they'd gotten from Santa. In the family room they found a new, secondary dollhouse and a lot of new furniture and a new dollhouse family for their older (slightly bigger) dollhouse, plus their stockings had been stuffed. Miranda was quite dismayed by this. She had asked Santa very clearly and in a very nice letter for a Mushabelly of some sort (she was favouring the horse, but graciously told Santa that any Mushabelly would do). When she saw that she hadn't gotten a Mushabelly, she was somewhat crestfallen...
Until they went into the livingroom, which is where Santa had put the bulk of the goodies. Including a Mushabelly horse. She carried the horse around with her all day and took it to bed with her. She was so very pleased! She did look over the other things she got (computer games, a new music theory book, pretty dresses, books, various other interesting toys, a DVD of The Upside Down Show, and played with many of them, but that little round horse is definitely the favourite this year. Isn't it good that Santa got that letter?
Santa
Miranda has pretty much figured out about Santa. I'm quite non-definite about it when she asks. I always ask her what she thinks, how she thinks it might be, etc. She's worked out that the way Santa can be in shopping centres and other functions is "somebody dresses up in a costume" and that Santa is "a metaphor" and so on. Her friend Brielly has said that Santa "is really your mum and dad", and that's what got Miranda thinking about it. So I'm pretty sure she's worked it out (if she asks outright, I'll probably tell her the truth because I don't like lying to kids; I have told her she's very clever to think about these things, though).
The interesting thing is that she shows no sign of wanting to stop the Santa metaphor at all. She enjoyed writing a letter to Santa, and she likes the whole idea of Santa Claus. I suppose it's like the fairies who live in her room and the magpie that talked to her and other such things. She enjoys the fantasy or the metaphor, and who am I to discourage that? So I don't.
But she is very clever. And she's right, Santa Claus is a metaphor. A very good one.
Miranda's story
At school, they do writing practice, where the kids write down a short story to describe their weekend (or to include other information if they like). At the beginning of the year, Miranda's stories were very short, but they're getting to be nearly two pages these days (written on the front and the back). They have to guess at the spelling and then the teacher comes and corrects it for them (and does the best he can; sometimes he has no idea what they're talking about, such as the time Miranda said she'd been to see the "Pixar show", and he insisted she must mean "picture show", but it was really a Pixar exhibition!). Anyway, her latest, with original spellings and corrections provided below (with teacher corrections):
It is nerley Christmas day. I mit might get a muha marcia* belly or a mick magic wand that faushers flashes. Yesterday my dad played at churh church. He nmay normally dote's doesn't and I sang ones Once in Rolyl Royal Daivd's David's City. The pleoyo people citcotatlayd congratulated me. My dad, Bries Brice, Geny Jenny**, and the cuchr choir.
* It's actually a "Mushabelly", a type of stuffed animal
** It's actually "Ginny", short for Virginia, but the teacher didn't know this, of course
Her first solo
Miranda sang her first solo today at church. She sang the first verse of Once in Royal David's City. She had a mic and everything. Other than taking a breath in the middle of the word "lowly", she did quite well. Yesterday, she said she was afraid she'd be nervous, but today when I asked if she was nervous she said, "Nope." (I think it helped that we were all very encouraging, telling her she'd do well and that you only need to be nervous if you're unprepared but she had practiced quite a lot.)
So, she plays the violin (very well for her age), reads music, has nearly perfect pitch (which could develop into perfect pitch later, I suspect, when she has more control over her voice), she's learning the recorder flute and the piano, and now she's taking up singing.
She's a diva in the making, I'm telling you...
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