My child's school assignment turns into thought exercise for me

S. came home with a school assignment for tomorrow, we had to tell her a funny story from when she was little so she could put it into her graphic organizer and bring it to school with a photo from the same time (see below). Sounds easy enough, but I was wrecking my brain and could not come up with a funny story. What came to my mind was the time we lost her at Playmobil World, her many ER visits with extreme Kroup or with horrible head wounds from being unbalanced and other catastrophic times we had together, like puking for hours on a flight to Germany or on another flight when she was focused on kicking the seat in front of her and I had to physically restrain her legs for seven hours.

Apparently my child does not offer a lot of physical comedy, though in retrospect horrible stories can have very amusing and entertaining qualities and if we would make a video showing the many times she has fallen of a chair, we would probably win a prize for it (but we don't have the footage). In our search for stories, we looked into our book in which we record interesting moments of childhood if we remember to do so. Looking through the book, almost everything we found for S was something she said, usually a dialog in which she took everything literal, or just very interesting expressions. Now this should not come as a surprise to me, this child did not learn walking the stairs and running until she was four, but she could write her name before her second birthday. When it comes to vocabulary and perception, she is light years ahead, when it comes to coordinating her body in space, not so much.

But back to the assignment, we had a lot of fun reading in that book of memories and remembering the funny stories and it is good thing for all of us, it makes us laugh together and it shows us the funny and heartfelt times. Through this shines the message that life has its ups and downs and that there are always good moments waiting around the corner, it also shows how life and people are changing, but what is not changing is us being a family. So what story did we come up with? When S was two years old, we had this long and cold winter and the snow accumulated and grew and grew. The children wanted to play in the snow while I got some firewood and S started walking on top of the snow following me until, all of a sudden, she broke through the snow crust and was completely gone! The snow was so high in the backyard, that is swallowed her all the way. After the first shock and overcoming the difficulties of pulling her out, we all just burst out in roaring laughter and stayed away from the snow until it melted away in spring.

And before I forget it, I will add two more entries into the book. While on vacation, when I tried to convince J not to visit the souvenir shops, to my delight S remarked that it is all "glorified junk" anyway. And when I went on an evening walk with her the other week, she complained about not having taken her cardigan and when I reacted surprised, she told me: "I feel a pinch of coldness on my skin." I can't begin to tell you how much I love my cerebral and clumsy muffin.