Yesterday the school phone book came out and Avery had her first phone call. It was ADORABLE. This little girl called and said "Does Avery live there?" and I said yes and asked who was calling. Her name was Aniyah and she's in Avery's class. So I gave Avery the phone and listen to them make plans for a play date was too cute. Avery stood in front of her calendar with a pen while they debated the merits of what day worked best. I told her Thursday after she was done at Friendship. Somehow the call was ended before they said goodbye but I told Avery to talk to her at school about it too. I don't know if she's coming over or not yet, but that phone call was just too much! I wish I had recorded it. I was grinning and cracking up in the hallway the whole time.

About 3 years ago I bought a dark purple satin Dora winter coat with a fuzzy light purple inside for Avery. It was huge and didn't fit until last winter. She had mostly passed out of her Dora stage but she still likes to watch it from time to time and she loves the fuzzy inside of the coat. Tonight when I put her to bed we were talking about her being embarrassed to ask for help during swimming lessons when she had trouble with her side breath because the kids can do it just fine. I told her everyone learns things at different rates so it's  nothing to be embarrassed about and there is probably some part of the lesson that she is better at than the other kids so it all works out. I ended by saying something about see, it's not so embarrassing after all right? And she said something to the effect of "yeah not like my Dora coat".

I asked her what she meant and she said she was embarrassed by it because some girl named Maggie said that she thought it was weird a 7 year old would wear a Dora coat. I told her there was nothing wrong with liking Dora, for one thing. It's a good show and she can watch whatever she wants. The other is that it's purple, fuzzy and super warm, so that's great all on it's own. I also told her some kids don't have winter coats and they have to rely on other people to help them get one so they don't get to choose at all. So be grateful that she has a warm coat and don't worry what other kids say about it.

We watched an episode of Little Bill one time that had a boy trying to get Little Bill to call kids names. He would say mean things to Little Bill to get him to retort back something in return. His dad told him the way that worked best for him to get kids to stop when he was little was to just say "So?" in response. So I told Avery to try that next time someone said something that made her embarrassed. So it would go something like this. A 7 year old still wears a Dora jacket? So?! And move on. ;) She liked it, hopefully it will work.