She is mind-bogglingly adorable and annoying. I want to play with her and slap her at the same time. I can't stop laughing with her, at times, and yet in the next minute I wonder why her parents haven't put her up for adoption.

The curse of the cute, dumb, child.

I am not the type to think anyone is "dumb" really. I'm just being impolite in that sentence up there. I think all children have potential and we have to tap into it and work with it and draw it out. Intelligence is relative, I say. Relative to how much your parents beat it out of you. Or how much nobody gives a crap whether or not you perform well, but relative, nonetheless.

In this case, I think intelligence is relative to a gregarious girl who doesn't need it. Who needs smarts when you're cute and funny and full of life?

"Please....for the love of all that is good...simplify...this....fraction..." I entreat her. I know that it will be difficult. We've done fourteen of these problems already and after two she forgets (entirely) what it is we are doing. It's like working with someone with amnesia.

She begins scribbling on the page and I wait with bated breath.

Maybe this time she'll remember...

She holds up the paper. No answer next to the fraction. Just some scribbling around it.

"You didn't put an answer down," I say glumly; half tempted to fall on the floor and throw a fit. "Again."

She smiles and flings her arms toward me, shaking her little fingers in "jazz hand" excitement while singing her response in falsetto:

"But I did put a smiley face around it!"

I think I'm going to just start that doing in life in general.

"My child did not get an A on that exam you helped her with."

Me: "But I did put a smiley face around it!"

"Where's the report on the ICC I've been waiting for, for an entire week?!"

Me: "Who the hell knows. But wherever it is-- I put a smiley face around it!"

"You didn't sign this rent check."

Me: you get the idea....

I think life might be a lot more pleasant this way, no?