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I don’t remember when she wrote these, but they are now pulled out of the notebook and floating around, so I don’t want to lose them. And by wrote, I mean “dictated to mommy”.

Butterflies
Butterflies start out as eggs.
They hatch and out comes a caterpillar.
They eat and eat.
More eating.
They eat lots of food. They crawl.
They are tired so they make a home on a branch.
Then out comes a butterfly.

Ladybugs
Ladybugs are so pretty people don’t think they are bugs.
They eat pest bugs. They stay in the grass so much. And
they have wings. And they can fly.

I think we missed the right colors on the leaves by a week or two this year– oops! Here are 2010′s Lilia and the Trees:

2009

2008

2007

2006

For reference…
2009 post
2008 post

When Lilia came home from school yesterday, she asked to paint. I pulled out the new poster paints and set the paper up on her easel, and she painted whatever she wanted. She did flowers, an orange, railroad tracks, and a penguin. I took pictures of the flowers and the penguin. I think the penguin is about as good as something I could do now. Or even better. How did this happen so quickly? At Christmas, I was still drawing little circles for faces and having her draw in the features. But now… just look. Are these normal for a four-year old?

Someone told me it was Draw a Bird Day. Because I recently had some good news after hearing a woodpecker (apparently the two are related!), I asked Lilia to draw a woodpecker.

Here it is, a pencil drawing of a woodpecker, by Lilia:

For a muddled Wikipedia post about Draw a Bird Day, check this out.

I regret that I didn’t pull my camera out when we visited with my Grandmother on Saturday. We had a nice visit with her, my uncle, aunt, and cousin.
After the visit, we drove to Lancaster County to take the Easter Bunny Train at Strasburg Rail Road. Lilia really enjoyed the train and seeing the Easter Bunny engineer.

Yesterday, we dyed eggs at home (again, regret that I didn’t take pics of that!) and then we went to Cloverly Park to hold our own Easter Egg Hunt. Joe hid one dozen eggs throughout the park and playground while Lilia and I waited. She managed to find every one. And then it was her turn to hide the eggs. I convinced her to let me go with her, and I tried to remember where she put them all, but we ended up giving up after we found eleven. We are thinking about putting up a “Lost: Easter Egg” sign in the park, but we aren’t sure what color it was.

A few weeks ago, we tried to go to the Philadelphia Art Museum on a Sunday, thinking it was “Pay what you Wish” day. It turned out that they only have that day on the first Sunday of the month– otherwise it is $20 admission. We left. Yesterday was “Pay what you Wish” day, and we paid less than we planned to the previous visit, for our trouble. Lilia was tired from her egg hunt, but was still a pretty good sport about the museum. We checked out the arms and armor section first– she really liked that, especially since Joe’s parents had explained all about castles when they visited last month. We then went to the section with the Spanish cloister, Chinese Palace, and Japanese Tea House. She started to fade at some points– she did not like any rooms that were too dark– but she enjoyed the video installations that were around– I really liked seeing how they conserved the Chinese Palace– amazing! Then we visited the 19th-20th century European Art, which included many by Monet, Renoir, Cezanne, and Mary Cassatt. She had already learned about Monet, Renoir, and Cezanne at the Barnes Museum last month, and we also recently watched Linnea in Monet’s Garden on Netflix, so she was able to recognize the Japanese bridge and the water lilies. Her favorite part of the visit, according to her, was throwing a penny into two fountains in the museum–one in the cloister, and one in European art. For some reason, the lights went off around 4:30, and we took this as a sign that we should leave.

Heading back to our car, we visited with a Phanatic statue near Boathouse Row, and watched drummers and roller skaters dance.

I only have pictures of some of the events described.