Hint: read “ice” as icky.
Being that she’s a five year old girl, Ali has a lot of words.
And although she does enjoy her daily quiet time, the multitudes of unused words tend to build up within her soul.
To prevent a horrible drain clog, overflow, or some other gruesome word tragedy, Ali has begun writing notes during this time and leaving them at the top of the stairs for me to happen upon at the end of quiet time.
Sometimes they are written to alleviate our great concern for where she might be, if by chance we forgot that it was quiet time and couldn’t find our precious daughter.
I am in my room jost so you no ok.
And so you no I laff obt that!
I went you haf to cum find me
Sometimes the notes build a fantastically crafted and increasing level of foreboding within my soul as I read one after the other.
Note 1:
Ples ples wil you ples ples oba wat the not sas
and the athr won to
th papr is for redeg at the end af cwiit tim
owbay the not ples ples
red thes not it ok.
I am in my room.
I am hideg.
In my room.
Red the ather sid bafor you red thes sid.
Note 2, Side B:
My bath room is stopt ap yo haf to yous your bathroom
trn ovr the papr win you finish redeg.
The girl could write horror films, that’s all I’m saying.
At the very beginning of this new writing phase, some of the notes were a bit hard to interpret, thanks to the complete absence of spaces between words.
We r selebradeg for a porde
ples com
a brthday porde ples come
ples ples ples
I doo not no wut I am saeg
jast cideg hauf u redeg and wideg and nutheg
After spending a good ten minutes deciphering and understanding that note (which must have been exactly what she wanted, since it was just exciting to have me reading and writing and nothing), I mentioned to her that perhaps she could offer me the greatest kindness of the gift of word spacing.
So the next day, I got this:
Ples ples not r u r to red
help ples
the dash is men that thars a nuthr wrd on the rit av the dash.
Help naw ples I am sorteng
No I am not sorteng help with that ples?
Rit yes or no ples.
Her notes, at times, can portray the specific desperation that being alone can birth in the soul of a five year old:
Loc at my rom naw
rit naw
ples ples wil you ples ples
ples ples ples ples ples ples ples ples ples ples ples ples ples ples
On one particular day, there were notes on several stairs. These were thrown strategically down the stairs, with a well-thought out contingency plan.
One one side,
Trn ovr th papr
And on the other,
Cam upstars ples ples wil you ples ples ples?
Later, I asked her about this note. She shrugged and said, “When you’re throwing notes down the stairs, you don’t know which side they’ll land on. That’s why I wrote instructions to you.”
(Clearly she has quite a bit of faith in my ability to interpolate the need to turn over a piece of paper.)
Her notes, at times, will be a deep confession, most likely eating away at her soul throughout her quiet time.
For instance, she has a rainbow projector in her room. It lasts for fifteen minutes, and we turn it on every night as we leave the room. When it goes off, she’s supposed to quit playing and go to bed.
One day during quiet time, she left me this confession:
I trnd on my rainbow last nit I the 4 tims
Another day, she confessed her quiet time activities.
I mad sopy wodr do you mind? Rit on the frunt
Thes sid is the frunt
<———————————————
If you hav ine qeschins rat thum on this papr ok?
Obviously, there’s quite the trend of bathroom concerns during quiet time (not to even mention her first quiet time ever resulting in the most traumatic bathroom issue of all time), but I finally got it through to her: You mess it up, you clean it.
After that, I received this one.
Doo not red the bac you can loc at it but don’t red it.
I clend my bathroom at 1:11 do you mind?
And, just in case the curiosity is overwhelming you (or the Great Fear and Foreboding of what she didn’t want me to know she cleaned up), this is The Side That Shall Not Be Read:
Cin I tac this to the in to the restrunt wr unt goeg to?
Because sometimes, a note is just a note.
How funny! My little girl is EXACTLY the same at the moment! Vast torrents of words pour onto any paper I give her!! Isn’t it SUCH a cute phase!
Sarahx
Yes, it is quite fun. Now I just need to get a filing cabinet in which to store them all!
Love it! My oldest daughter used to do the same thing during quiet time!
I love this. Thanks for sharing. My daughter is 2.5 so I only get to listen to her quiet time ramblings…can’t wait for them to be in writing.
Wow! It’s awesome that she’s putting all that on paper at age five (spelling can come later, but getting thoughts written down is all good). You’re raising a bright (and possibly slightly *too* polite) girl! :)
Thanks! Sometimes I worry about the spelling and the handwriting and the everything, but it can’t be bad for her to learn to write early, right?
These notes are both precious and funny. : ) I love little kids first attempts at writing.
I love everything about this post.
These notes are just too cute.
What an industrious use of quiet time! I love these notes, but mostly her ples ples ples ples. That just cracks me up!
How great that she is writing so much!!! I cannot get K to write by herself and it’s driving me crazy! She wants me to spell every word so it is perfect. She refuses to even try on her own b/c she knows she is spelling things wrong. Her perfectionism is frustrating. Mostly b/c it is a mirror image of myself. :P
Ali’s a little perfectionist too – I’m pretty surprised that she got over it enough to write on her own!
This made me laugh so hard, because I used to write similar notes for my parents and leave them at the top of the stairs.
I bet they still have them, too!
I love Ali’s notes! They’re always so cute and full of personality. :)
lol these are hilarious! It reminds me of my 7 year old. She’s been leaving me notes for quite some time now. Thankfully as she gets older they are easier to understand and take less time trying to figure out what her notes are about. :) Here is one she wrote when she was 6 I felt the need to blog about. http://adayinthelifeofasahmof1.blogspot.com/2012/02/circle-yes-or-no.html
That’s a great note! I’ve gotten a couple “Circle yes or no” notes too, and it cracks me up! Where do they learn that?
Rachel,
I am very curious to know your take on all this election business. I know you are a Christian woman. Did you vote for Mitt? Are you planning to post about it? I would love to know your thoughts!
Politics are one of the things on “My List” that I won’t talk about on my blog, so no, I won’t be posting about it. In my years on social media and my analytical study of others, I feel that it does little good to share political opinions on Facebook, Twitter or Blogs – it just opens up cans of worms and creates offenses, and rarely if ever changes anyone else’s opinion. So I keep some topics for “in real life” conversations only! :)
Another reason I don’t post about it is that I am not passionately excited about any party, candidate, or political affiliation – I don’t feel that any of them adequately express my views (although some are clearly much closer than others), and I am very cynical about our country’s political process in general. I sadly doubt that any politician who makes it far enough to run for president could really be someone of honor and that I could believe in. I sincerely hope to be disproved at some point in the future on that one, though!