Since Anna spends a lot of time away from us, we frequently discover some talent she as acquired without our help. Recently, the new skill was the use of scissors. At our most recent parent-teacher conference, Anna’s teacher remarked on how well Anna was able to cut paper.

Tonight, Anna set up at the kitchen table and proceeded to cut neat spirals out of each piece of paper. Wow, we thought, she knows how to cut spirals. That is, until she showed us a one inch circle of paper, which is actually what she meant to cut out. The spiral was only a by-product of the process of cutting out the middlemost patch of each 8×11 sheet of construction paper. She did this several more times, each time showing us proudly a small circle of paper, and tossing the other 99% of each sheet.