Interpreter Needed for Kid Writing

Kira laughs in her sleep. It's the most adorable thing.

I think I know why she laughs. Because she's got the most pathetic mom ever and she is reviewing the bizarre things her mom does and says in a day in her dreams and she just cannot help herself.

I have mentioned before Kira's love of her whiteboard. Well, this love has not faded over time. Lately she and Mark have been playing some kind of basketball game (that she made up) on her whiteboard, which is really quite creative seeing as it keeps a 12-year-old also interested.

But anyway. This morning she was writing notes back and forth to me. My note back to her invariably said, "Get ready for school." (eventually progressing to "Get ready for school NOW.") Her last note was obviously meant to sustain me for the day, as it included the directions "do not earase." Now *this* I was able to correctly interpret.
What I couldn't get was the two-part picture that was obviously a drawing of the photos I have hanging up in the stairway. I loved her interpretation of the bottom picture, which included the onomatopoeias "plump" and "oof," along with a helpful descriptor of the mass of scribbles attached to the person ("hair"). The top picture, however, had a single bubble of words that *I* read as "cuter me." As in "me, when I was little and adorable." And I started to tease her a bit about labeling it like that (although part of me was a little worried that she no longer thought of herself as cute, and what that might mean for her self esteem), and she looked at me like I had four heads (as opposed to my normal three) and said, "That's NOT what it says." So I looked more closely. And still more closely. Crickets chirped. And finally, the light dawned.

CATCH me.

As I burst into (slightly embarrassed) laughter, she looked at me, resigned, and said, "You're going to write about this, aren't you." mk

p.s. Somebody please tell me that they can at least see where I was coming from with my error.