Clever Girl

*Bonus points if you read the title in a British accent, a la Jurassic Park.


Anna, my little naturalist, loves to catch fireflies.  She would do it every night if we let her.  Unfortunately for her, fireflies only come out when it gets dark, which is past her bedtime.  This means it has to be a night when we are willing to let her go to bed late.  That doesn't happen often, so when it does, it is, in her word "THE BEST NIGHT EVER!!!"

Recently, I was out of town for a week, so Sean had the kids on his own.  Daddy is a sucker for his daughter's big blue eyes, so she managed to convince him to let her stay up late and chase fireflies.  Joshua was staying the night at a friend's house, so it was just Daddy, Anna and Matthew outside.

Matthew likes to chase fireflies, but he gets bored with it pretty fast.  After a while, he asked Sean if they could play hide n seek instead.

"Matthew," Anna said sternly, "we are CATCHING FIREFLIES, NOT playing hide n seek!"

Frustrated, Matthew pouted for a while, and then he tried asking again.  Anna considered her brother  for a moment and then decided to try a different tack.

"Matthew, I know what we can do!"  she said.  "We can play a game!"

"A GAME?"  Matthew asked eagerly, intrigued by the notion of a new game."

"YES," Anna said grinning, "a SEARCHING game."

"A SEARCHING game?!" Matthew asked excitedly.

"Yes.  It's a game where we search for things.  And I will pick the first thing we will search for.  First we will search for...FIREFLIES."

"YAY!!!!" exclaimed my naive little toddler, and off he ran with his sister to play the searching "game."

One way or another, Anna knows how to get what she wants!