Meighan and "The Tinder Box"

The soldier climbs the tree in "The Tinder Box"

Meighan was hard to wake up this morning. She wouldn’t get out of bed no matter what I did to coax her awake. After many back rubs, I started to read Hans Christian Anderson to her, specifically "The Tinder Box". She put her hands over her ears so that she couldn't hear me, and when that didn't work, she started humming louder than I could read.

At least I knew for sure she was awake.

I told her no humming while I was reading and I made a new rule -- she had to sit upright by me on the bed, so we got a long way into the story, with our legs hanging off the bed this morning.

I had to laugh again for we read during breakfast at which time she said, "Oh, I thought the solider was a girl". This was in response to the soldier, now dressed as a grand gentleman, wanting to court the princess. It would never have entered by head as a six year old that a solider could be a woman.

We finished off the morning practicing looking like the witch in the story who has a lip that hangs down to her waist. "Oh, I thought it was her tongue", said Meighan after looking at the picture. Nope. The text said that the witch's lip hung down that low. We tried to pull our own lower lips down that far, our final act of truly waking up.

Bad luck on the lip hanging.  Neither of us could get ours past our chins.

Good luck on waking up.

Arta