Sapphire's Four Year Old Gems

I started reading chapter books to Sapphire before bedtime. We've covered the BFG and Because of Winn-Dixie (both were hits with her big sister). After learning that India Opal's mother has left the family, Sapphire looked up at me and sighed before asking dramatically, "Who is my birth mother? I wish I knew about my birth mother." When I explained that it was me, she almost seemed disappointed. "I wanted to be like Ruby," she explained, dejected.  A few days later she asked Pearl who her birth mother was.

We had tried Little House in the Big Woods, but only because I am a horrible judge of Sapphire's character. After a week of her unenthusiastic listening, I switched to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Wow, is she ever fired up about all the chocolate.

And how does a four-year-old ward off hunger? In our house we keep our eggs on a special egg shelf in our clearly outdated fridge. We mark hard-boiled ones with an H to avoid unpleasant surprises. Sapphire seems to have missed a step in the process, because I walked into the kitchen to find her holding a raw egg that she had just smacked onto the table.

Because the membrane held and stopped the white and yolk from leaking out, I was able to take in the situation calmly.  "I wanted a H egg," she said quickly, clearly boggled that the egg wasn't hard-boiled. As I took the fragile shell out of her hand, I noticed a freshly written, squiggly capital H on the side. Because we had no "H eggs" ready, she had mistakenly thought writing the letter on the shell would instantly turn a raw one into a hard-boiled snack.

More recently, right around Christmastime, Sapphire's prayers at grace went from a quick: "Thank you for everything" to a more focused, but completely inexplicable: "Please help the food not be poisonous." So far it has worked.