Wake up—puppy!

Zoë helped Phoebe get dressed on Sunday morning. 

She picked out a black dress with white polka dots because she found—in a bin of clothes that we pulled out recently—a black dress with white polka dots! That meant she and Phoebe could be twins!

Zoë even put Phoebe's hair into a little braid, as you can (kind of) see in this picture:

Phoebe has been quite the handful this week, just getting into everything, and not sleeping well, and in general creating chaos. Here she is blowing on a little trumpet will great enthusiasm:

This week Zoë also decided to learn how to play the recorder (which meant Alexander had a sudden desire to also learn the recorder, which meant that Phoebe also wanted to fine tune her musical skills). So there's been a lot of...noise music...this week.

And, like always, a whole lot of silliness (not actually sure what the girls are doing here):

As an example of how precisely impish Phoebe has been this week, there was one day when she was happily drawing on her chalkboard while the rest of us were reading The Tragedy of King Leer.  Well, she turned and started drawing a big line down my wall. 

"Phoebe!" several of us from the table. 

"Don't you draw on my wall!" I said. 

"Oh. Hee-hee," Phoebe said (she says "hee-hee" a lot, especially when she's caught doing something she knows she ought not to be doing). "Me keen it oss!"

She whipped out a wet washcloth she had in her other hand, and began wiping away her chalk marks. It was as if she had pre-mediated her crime! We joked about her growing up to be a graffiti artist, but taking a sandblaster with her so that if/when she gets caught (when is more likely because, as I frequently tell my children, there's always a when) she can whip it out and say, "I'm cleaning it off!"

Here she is giving herself a soap beard in the middle of the hallway (having climbed onto the bathroom sink to get the soap down):

She also got a little case of contact dermatitis from this adventure because apparently you're supposed to rinse soap off, not rub it deeply into your skin. I did give her a bath after catching her here, but from the looks of things she'd been lathering for quite some time and her cheeks were red and welt-y at bedtime (she woke up fine the next morning).

And lastly, here's a little selfie she took after stealing my phone at some point yesterday (she face planted on the driveway and got a few abrasions on her cheek):

There was a big thunderstorm yesterday afternoon and Phoebe—the puppy—came up to me and said, "Puppy heard thunder. Puppy is a little bit worried. You hold the puppy?"

"Sure, I can hold the puppy," I said. 

"Puppy is me," she clarified, reaching up to be held. 

I knew she was the puppy. 

When she wakes up in the morning, very often one of the first things she'll do is stick out her tongue and start panting. 

"Last night, Phoebe went to bed," she'll tell me. "Wake up—puppy!"

Then she'll usually try to lick me, which I do not like so much. 

Being a puppy usually means she's in a pretty good mood. If she forgets to be a puppy, chances are she's bound to have a grumpy day.