UC Davis

I often wonder how to explain political ideas to Gracie. Do I show her the injustice in the world? How will she react? Will I be sorry I showed her that the world is not all wonderful?

I was cruising Facebook when she wandered over. So we watched this video about the protest at UC Davis together, and though I paused it about 5 times to explain, she really seemed to get it. Her confused response after seeing the campus police spray tear gas on the protesters: "But... I thought we were allowed to do that in America?" I explained to her that even police make mistakes. How else to explain it? That people in power sometimes abuse that power?

It certainly makes one think.

What to do at night, instead of sleeping...

Last night I was checking on the kids and I found this:

Hmm, a secret message, I thought. I wonder if Gracie was reading a story about codes? So I looked through the book she'd been reading. Nope, no secret codes. So I asked her about it the next morning.

"Oh. You found that?" she replied, a bit uneasily. No doubt worried she was going to get in trouble for not going to sleep.

"Yeah, what is it?"
"It's a secret message. Hippo taught it to me." Hippo is her beloved stuffed animal.

"What?" This was getting more and more interesting.
"Hippo taught me how to write in her language, and I wrote her a note."

So last night, instead of going to sleep, Gracie created her very own cipher (and quite a good one, I might add), and then used it to write an entire letter.

Ross made a quick attempt to decode the letter. "Ah, I can see that that is a T!" Without even looking at her key, she says "Daddy! That's not a T! That's an N!" So not only did she create the code, she memorized it - in one night.

She never ceases to amaze us...

PS - If you want to figure it out, you may find this helpful. Hint: there are some misspellings, which, if you think about it, are just clever ways to make your code even more encrypted!