Where did I go wrong?
This afternoon:
Daisy, muttering fiercely to herself as she grips her friend Elise's Elmo book, and she notices Elise approaching: "Don't share, Daisy. Don't share!"
Another recent favorite of mine: Mark was watching Daisy one morning and I was trying to get a little more sleep, and I heard her knocking on the bedroom door saying firmly, "Open the Mamas. Open the Mamas!"
She has been full of the strangest comments lately, now that I think about it. Clearly she is at a stage where she is making things up in her head, because she talks about them, semi-coherently. Like tonight, she told us "a mouse is flying in a grocery shop." ??? More disturbingly, she also kept referring to a "casket" and said several things about people being "in heaven." We have never talked to her about caskets or heaven, so we have no idea where she is getting this. Oh, and she also mentioned "Mickey Mouse" several times, as clear as a bell, and we have never introduced her to Mickey Mouse. It's very interesting, trying to imagine where she might be getting things--since she is never out of our sight.
Another odd thing: the other day she let Mark know, with loud insistence, that he was reading a certain book wrong. She calls this book the "I spy, little eye" book. When she "reads" it to herself, she says, "I spy, little eye... the moon! A bunny!" (etc.) as she turns the pages. She does not want us to read this book to her unless we read it the same way. Now, there is no mention of "I spy with my little eye" anywhere in this book, and none of us have ever read it in this way to her. We even asked my mother, in case that's where she was getting it, but, no. So apparently, Daisy has just decided that that's how this book is to be read. What's even more puzzling is that none of us PLAYS the "I spy with my little eye" game with her, so I'm not sure how she fixed on that expression. I do remember, once--months and months ago--using that expression with her as we were walking. But it's not something I do habitually or remember doing in the recent past, and my mother and Mark said the same.
I wonder if Daisy might have inherited Mark's bizarrely precise memory. She seems to have an almost unbelievably good memory. This evening in the bath she recited (out of the blue) the Mother Goose rhyme "Dr. Foster went to Gloucester." She leaves out prepositions and articles here and there, but she does the whole thing. And she can do the same for many other songs and nursery rhymes. We used to try to encourage her to fill in words here and there, but recently she's been reciting them entirely of her own accord--and the WHOLE thing--when she's in the mood to do so, and not when prompted by us. And she's remembering things that we never particularly emphasized. So-- the girl's got a mind of her own, and she's putting things together in wholly new ways. When she "reads" her books aloud, she now combines references to the books themselves with references to songs, other books, Teletubbies (yes, I'm afraid so), and God knows what else. It's very funny to listen to. While reading Babar the other day, she narrated that the fish were doing
"the hoochy koochy dance." She also wove in Tinky Winky, Huckle the Cat from her Richard Scarry books, and the plot of TITCH AND DAISY, one of her other favorite books. On certain pages, she raises her voice dramatically and shakes her finger at the page emphatically, as though someone in the book is being severely reprimanded; she also has a particular high-pitched voice that she puts on when she's doing dialogue, as Mark pointed out.
I haven't been trying to record her sentences anymore because there are so many of them. I guess the way to put it is that she is now creating entirely new sentences--many of them--every day, instead of imitating specific things she's heard us say. She is combining words in sentences in new ways, in her own ways, and there is so much variety that it is not really possible to record what she is saying. But in case I ever want to know someday, I feel like I should give some examples. On the shorter side, she will say, "It's too hot," or "Dada's sneezing, achoo" or something like that. On the longer side, an example is (narrating a bear book this afternoon), "It's early in the morning, the bears go outside." She will talk and talk and talk, and we can make out about two thirds of what she is saying-- I have the feeling she is puting together entire paragraphs based on all these connections and associations that are going on in her mind (books, songs, experiences) but we only catch parts of it. Whole chunks pop up at us and we look at each other and say, "Wow, did you hear what she just said??" But it is clear that she's said a lot more and we didn't get all of it. It's exciting to be catching more and more of it as she gets older and her pronunciation gets a lot clearer. You should hear how clearly and precisely she says "watermelon!"
Daisy, muttering fiercely to herself as she grips her friend Elise's Elmo book, and she notices Elise approaching: "Don't share, Daisy. Don't share!"
Another recent favorite of mine: Mark was watching Daisy one morning and I was trying to get a little more sleep, and I heard her knocking on the bedroom door saying firmly, "Open the Mamas. Open the Mamas!"
She has been full of the strangest comments lately, now that I think about it. Clearly she is at a stage where she is making things up in her head, because she talks about them, semi-coherently. Like tonight, she told us "a mouse is flying in a grocery shop." ??? More disturbingly, she also kept referring to a "casket" and said several things about people being "in heaven." We have never talked to her about caskets or heaven, so we have no idea where she is getting this. Oh, and she also mentioned "Mickey Mouse" several times, as clear as a bell, and we have never introduced her to Mickey Mouse. It's very interesting, trying to imagine where she might be getting things--since she is never out of our sight.
Another odd thing: the other day she let Mark know, with loud insistence, that he was reading a certain book wrong. She calls this book the "I spy, little eye" book. When she "reads" it to herself, she says, "I spy, little eye... the moon! A bunny!" (etc.) as she turns the pages. She does not want us to read this book to her unless we read it the same way. Now, there is no mention of "I spy with my little eye" anywhere in this book, and none of us have ever read it in this way to her. We even asked my mother, in case that's where she was getting it, but, no. So apparently, Daisy has just decided that that's how this book is to be read. What's even more puzzling is that none of us PLAYS the "I spy with my little eye" game with her, so I'm not sure how she fixed on that expression. I do remember, once--months and months ago--using that expression with her as we were walking. But it's not something I do habitually or remember doing in the recent past, and my mother and Mark said the same.
I wonder if Daisy might have inherited Mark's bizarrely precise memory. She seems to have an almost unbelievably good memory. This evening in the bath she recited (out of the blue) the Mother Goose rhyme "Dr. Foster went to Gloucester." She leaves out prepositions and articles here and there, but she does the whole thing. And she can do the same for many other songs and nursery rhymes. We used to try to encourage her to fill in words here and there, but recently she's been reciting them entirely of her own accord--and the WHOLE thing--when she's in the mood to do so, and not when prompted by us. And she's remembering things that we never particularly emphasized. So-- the girl's got a mind of her own, and she's putting things together in wholly new ways. When she "reads" her books aloud, she now combines references to the books themselves with references to songs, other books, Teletubbies (yes, I'm afraid so), and God knows what else. It's very funny to listen to. While reading Babar the other day, she narrated that the fish were doing
"the hoochy koochy dance." She also wove in Tinky Winky, Huckle the Cat from her Richard Scarry books, and the plot of TITCH AND DAISY, one of her other favorite books. On certain pages, she raises her voice dramatically and shakes her finger at the page emphatically, as though someone in the book is being severely reprimanded; she also has a particular high-pitched voice that she puts on when she's doing dialogue, as Mark pointed out.
I haven't been trying to record her sentences anymore because there are so many of them. I guess the way to put it is that she is now creating entirely new sentences--many of them--every day, instead of imitating specific things she's heard us say. She is combining words in sentences in new ways, in her own ways, and there is so much variety that it is not really possible to record what she is saying. But in case I ever want to know someday, I feel like I should give some examples. On the shorter side, she will say, "It's too hot," or "Dada's sneezing, achoo" or something like that. On the longer side, an example is (narrating a bear book this afternoon), "It's early in the morning, the bears go outside." She will talk and talk and talk, and we can make out about two thirds of what she is saying-- I have the feeling she is puting together entire paragraphs based on all these connections and associations that are going on in her mind (books, songs, experiences) but we only catch parts of it. Whole chunks pop up at us and we look at each other and say, "Wow, did you hear what she just said??" But it is clear that she's said a lot more and we didn't get all of it. It's exciting to be catching more and more of it as she gets older and her pronunciation gets a lot clearer. You should hear how clearly and precisely she says "watermelon!"
posted by Sarah Goss at 8:27 PM
3 Comments:
Daisy knows Mickey Mouse because Mickey and Minnie appear on a certain brand of diaper that she's had and she and I always talk about the design on her diapers (and clothes that she and I are wearing - that's why she says "peace sign, cupcake, stripes,etc.)
The word "heaven" is in one of her songs and she was asking me about that word the other day. Hmmm, "casket".... Does she know "a tisket, a tasket"?????
M.B. (proud Gommy)
In the park yesterday, the Daize was reciting an obscure Mother Goose rhyme about a crooked man who walked a crooked mile. When I finished up the rhyme for her she looked at me intently and told me she wanted to go home and read Mother Goose. Her Gompers did just that for her when we got home.
In the meantime we had a ball in the park. A little mole popped his head out of a hole right at our feet! We didn't see out favorite Phoebe, but we did see two crows harrassing a red-tailed hawk. The Daize is already a committed bird watcher! M.B.
Ha!
I took Daisy to the park today. She had fun for awhile, but then she fell down and cried. As I was comforting her, she demanded both Gommy AND Gompy, snubbing her poor dear mother's soothing attempts. She also started demanding to read her "Eddie and Teddy" book. When I explained it was at home, she said, "Go home." The kid wanted to leave the playground to go home and read. It is truly sad that the apple has fallen so close to the tree.
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