Family

{Our family.}

Malayna brought this drawing of our family home from school yesterday. There's me on the left (with super-flippy hair), Jimmy on the right and Malayna below him (with glasses). See those two extra people on the bottom left? That's Jack and Annie - her imaginary brother and sister. They've been around for some time now, and usually Malayna pretends she is Jack and Annie is her little sister. (These two appeared when we started reading Magic Tree House books.) According to Malayna, Annie is adventurous, a little bad, and sleeps on top of the canopy bed. She steals Jack's toys, runs in the street and gets lots of time-outs. Jack, on the other hand, is the voice of reason. He's very cautious, always does what he's told and tells on Annie a lot. I started buying these books for Malayna hoping that she'd identify with the adventurous girl Annie. No such luck - she'd rather pretend she's Jack.

We talked about how it is titled "DiPlacido Family" -  Jimmy's and Malayna's last name. She said, "You're not a DiPlacido. What are you? A Kelley?" She asked why we had different names and I told her that I kept my name when I got married, but that some women take their husband's name and drop their other name. Her reply: "That's not very nice! They should keep their name."