Smart vs. Beauty OR Mom vs. Too-Smart of a Four Year Old

My soon-to-be 5 year old is smart.  She knows she is smart.  But, she loves to hear me tell her how smart she is.

She comments on how she was a smart baby. She requires that I agree with her.

She comments on how she is smart now because she can do _________ (fill in the blank with anything she knows how to do.)  Once again, I am required to agree with her or she will say it over and over again until I do.

She asks me things like, "Am I smarter than Sister?" to which I usually end up replying, you are both smart, but Sister is older and knows a lot more than you do.  And then she reminds me how smart she was as a baby.

She will announce to me some reason of logic she has come up with.  You can't tell her it is anything otherwise, even if her logic is completely off.  She will simply say, "I know, but___ (and restates her own logic.)  Arguing with her on this point is futile. I just smile and nod.

I didn't want my daughters to grow up with the idea that they should only be beautiful (even though they both are.)  I once read an interesting article written by a Dr. Mom in one of those highly over-priced parenting magazines that:  If we only tell our daughters how beautiful they are, they will think that beauty is the most important thing and they will not work to learn, go to school, or do anything of value with their life.  So, throughout their lives, I've told my daughters not only how beautiful they are, but how smart they are as well.  I've encouraged them to learn anything they want and become whatever they want because they are smart enough to do so.

I think I've created an overly-smart-smarty-pants of a four year old monster.

Growing Nuggets

Our chicken nuggets have grown a lot.  Each day they change and get bigger.  After the first week, they started to change.  They were quite ugly as their adult feathers started to sprout under their baby fuzz.  We joked at how they are going through the awkward teen stage.  They aren't quite so ugly anymore.  They still have some baby fuzz and sound like baby chicks, but they have many of their adult feathers. 

They are speedy fast and getting more difficult to catch.  We take them out of their bucket to clean out their stinky bucket each day.  If they day is sunny, we put them in the yard while we wash the tub.  They are happy chickies when we do this.  They are very unhappy when we catch them to put them back into their bucket.

Really, they are getting too big for their bucket, but we don't have anywhere else to put them yet.  We are hoping the weather will turn warm soon.  They keep pecking at their bucket, trying to escape.  We've also had to put a chicken wire lid on the bucket because they can hop out now.

We can't tell them apart anymore, not since they've gotten their real feathers.  I call each one Nugget.

A little time in the yard.

Really, they've changed a lot since this picture was taken 3 days ago.  It's amazing how fast they are growing.

The improv group's latest show

Today my teen improv group had their 4th performance.  It was at the local mall, on a stage, with sound equipment.  Yeah, we're going for the big time here!~

We had some technical difficulties and the first few sketches the kids did were completely inaudible.  But, with a little help from a friend, the mics started to work.  It was a lot of fun and a good learning experience for us all.

Check out my theater's website for pictures:  Teenprov! Performance

Meet our nuggets

We've got ourselves six little chicken nuggets.  They have survived two days and two nights with us.  They are getting lots and lots of love.  They have been given names.

Oldest son named his Mary Elena
Second son named his Berk
Oldest daughter named hers Fluffette
Youngest son named his Frosty
Youngest daughter named hers Rosalinda
I picked the final name and it is Nugget

They are almost impossible to tell them apart, but Berk does have a different pattern on her back that makes her a little easier to distinguish.  My husband attempted to 'mark' the chicks by dyeing two of them.  Frosty has some blue in his wings and Rosalinda is pink.  You can kind of see them in the pictures.  I just call them all Nugget.

I was getting ready to clean out their stinky bucket when I took this picture.  They didn't like the box I had for them....

They live in a bucket in the bathtub and will live there until they are big enough to be outside. I've never dealt with chickens before, so I don't know how long that will take. Three weeks, maybe??  Until then, they are super cute and oh so fluffy!!!