Claire Garden writes
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I Can Spell DVD

and other accomplishments
2009

My name is Madi Oleson.  I’m four years old and three months.  Daddy said I look like Aunt June. 

But when he looked in Aunt June’s old photo album, he found out I look just like him at my age.  (My hair is longer.)

Rylie looks like Mommy.  Rylie can spell lots of hard words. 

I can spell, too.  I can spell DVD.  Listen:  D…V…D.  See? 

Rylie likes to spell words like this:  K…N...O…W. 

I said, “I can spell no:  N…O.”  Daddy said we were both right.

I can spell on:  O…N, just like no, backwards.  See?  There it is on the DVD player.

I can play catch with balloons.  It wasn’t my fault the balloon got caught in something and squeezed.  It made a very loud pop!  Everybody at the party was scared at the noise. 

I wasn’t.  Well, not very scared.

I can swing on my cousins’ swing.  It has one long rope hanging from a big tree with a board that I sit on.  My legs go around the rope and I hold on tight with my hands. 

Daddy pushed me in the swing.  I went sailing around a little branch dangling down from the tree and whee!  The swing flipped me upside down and dropped me on my tummy into the soft grass.

I was surprised.  But I didn’t cry.

Dama Dare said Daddy was always falling off or jumping off things when he was little.  He had to go to the emergency room.

I  didn’t.  I just plopped right down in the grass and didn’t even scrape my knee.

Puppies like me.  Jasmine likes my hair so much, she wants to eat it up.  Her tongue tickles my neck.

I can sing all the words to “Yellow Bird.”  I sing it like this:
yel-low bird!   
That’s where I snap my head down like a bird.  I can play the piano, too, while I’m singing and snapping my head.

I can gather eggs. I can reach into the coop and get a blue egg! Then Rylie can reach in and get another blue egg. Dama Dare said my blue egg was laid by Blanche, and Rylie’s blue egg was laid by Beige.

Blanche and Beige are not blue hens. They are white. And when Dama Dare scrambled the eggs the next morning, the scrambled eggs were not blue, either. They were yellow-orange.

I can play with Grandpa Evan’s really really big ball. The most fun way to play with it is to sit on the ball while Grandpa bounces me. But sometimes we roll it back and forth to each other.

I can run fast.  Rylie and I like to run races.  Sometimes I win.  Sometimes we tie.  Sometimes Rylie wins.  But not by much.

Rylie climbed the old magnolia tree in the front yard of Terra Nova’s yellow house.  That will be my next  trick.  I know how.  But first I have to grow as tall as Rylie. 

Then I’ll be like yellow bird.  But I’ll be up high in magnolia tree.

The End

Madilyn Jane Oleson

with a little help and a few chuckles from Dama Dare