speech, oil, and fairy godmothers

Larkin has been dismissed from her speech class! They reevaluated her and her speech skills are now in the normal range for her age. Her intelligibility is great and she's talking up a storm! She's proud that she "graduated" but does miss her teachers. They made her a graduation book that has pictures of her two teachers in it and as Larkin says, "Then when I get sad and miss them, I can look at their picture and not forget them!"

Currently she's really interested in the Gulf oil spill and loves to talk about it with anyone who will listen (even with kids whose moms may not want their kids to know about the spill yet--sorry Robin and Clay!!). Usually it goes something like this: "Mommy, does X know about the oil spill yet? I'm gonna tell 'em! They need to know!" Then she'll say, "Did you know that oil spilled in the ocean and it's going to get all over the fish and birds, and they might die? I'm so sad I could cry." Every morning when she wakes up she asks to look at pictures on the internet so she can find out how the spill cleanup is going!

Willa is excited to have Larkin around more now that speech is over. I think it's safe to say that Willa takes after Joel 110%...she is always finding ways to get herself into trouble and has a great sense of humor.

Some of Willa's recent quotes/activities:

"Mommy, don't look at me, don't listen to me." --when she says this, I know she's doing something she's not supposed to be doing!!

"This will be perfect for my centerpiece." I think she started saying this a few months ago while we were picking flowers and talking about how the flowers could be our centerpiece. Now everything is "perfect for my centerpiece"--she says this when she sits down to a good snack, tells Harley he would be a perfect centerpiece, etc. Obviously she has no idea what it means, but likes the way it sounds!

Whenever I catch her doing something "bad" (like coloring her arms with markers instead of the paper, painting her face with watercolors, putting all the marker caps on her fingers, stacking ALL of her books in her bed when she's supposed to be sleeping, etc.) she always answers with, "I do this cause I want Daddy" or "My Godmother said it was okay."
Larkin is always talking about her own imaginary fairy Godmother, and Willa has picked it up too. Unfortunately Larkin does not like Willa having a Godmother, and usually when Willa talks about hers Larkin will interrupt and say, "You don't have a Godmother! Only I do!!" Then there's a "YES I DO!" and "NO YOU DON'T!" and "YES I DO!" followed by tears.