Caught Stealing

Where I live, there is an agency that helps foster parents pay for day care for their foster children. This agency helps anyone who meets certain financial requirements, but foster children are considered to have no income and the foster parents' income is not counted, so foster kids are always eligible. It's really nice. We have no fees at all for the kids' day care.

Foster parents do have to check in with the agency periodically-- go down and sign paperwork. Yes, they still live with me. Yes, they're still in day care. At the end of this process, they walk you through a room filled with books and let you pick out a book for each of your foster kids.

I had to renew our day care voucher today and I had Elise with me while I did it. The lady who was helping me said at the end that Elise could pick out a book, too. Very nice of her.

While I was looking for books for Henry and Georgia, Elise was browsing the shelves, too. Right at her baby eye-level she found a book with Sesame Street characters. I've been showing Elise some Seasme Street most days of the week, to keep her occupied while I make dinner. She watches maybe 20 minutes of an hour episode. And LOVES it.

I saw her pick up the Seasme Street book. She looked up at me. We made eye contact. Then she took off running. I think she believed that she was stealing the book.

Of course, I let her keep it. She power-walked/baby-ran almost the whole way back to the car with that book. Big Bird is going to need to have a serious talk with my kid about this.