Monday, March 31, 2008

Happiness

Daisy said to me today, while looking right into my eyes, "I love you, Mamas." Could anything make a person happier?

Arwen's new play

My mom (the Matzo Ball) and I saw Arwen in A Streetcar Named Desire last night at the Marin Theatre Company. We both thought it was some of the most riveting theatre we've seen in our lives. We were absolutely glued to the stage throughout. Brilliant cast, brilliant production. Huge emotional intensity. It's still with me today. I hope you can go see it if you're in the Bay area!

Sunday, March 30, 2008

Daisy's East Bay visit

Daisy at Tom and Katherine's in Oakland (check out their view!!). She wanted to spend the whole time out on their deck, interacting with their dog, Maggie-- this girl loves the outdoors. She did tell me, however, "Tom is very cute." She also referred to him as "Tom Kitten," per her recent obsession with the Beatrix Potter books. Oh, and Mark identified a pole on the deck, and she called it a "polar bear." We couldn't quite talk her out of it, though she started calling it "the polar" after awhile.

Recent Daisy

Daisy's choice

Here is one of the pictures Daisy asked me to take of her in the laundry basket. She would want you to see it.

Dialogues with Daisy

I was in the bathroom and heard a knocking.

Me: Who is it?
Daisy: It's Titch [a character in one of her books].
Me: Hmm, I don't think so. Who is it?
Daisy: It's Gommy.
Me: I don't think so. Who is it?
Daisy: It's white. No, no, no, it's not white. It's yellow. No, no, no, it's not yellow. It's pink. No, no, no, it's not pink. It's Rumpelstiltskin.

Friday, March 28, 2008

Yes, she is a toddler

Today:

1) Me (after showing her her favorite electronic card 50 times in a row): This is the last time now, okay? One last time.

Daisy: Two last times.

2) She screams. SCREAMS.

Leaps and bounds

This morning:

1) Daisy had a plan of several steps in mind and executed it. This was really a first, so I have to record it. She told me, "Put Daisy in"--pointing at the laundry basket. So I put her in. That was surprising enough. Then she kept saying, "See Daisy. See Daisy!" I couldn't understand what she meant. She was getting a bit frustrated. Then she said, "One, two, three, cheese!" And she said it again. She wanted me to take a picture of her in the basket. I was shocked--really shocked. I can't put my finger on exactly what it was--maybe the multi-step nature of the plan, or her cleverness in communicating it to me, or both--but this felt like a conceptual leap.

I went and got the camera and photographed her in the laundry basket. They aren't great pictures, but how cool is it that she figured out that that's what she wanted?

2) This, too, seems like a first. Daisy told me she wanted to play with Play Doh, and we were playing with it, when she suggested I make a dog out of the clay. I said, "Do you want me to make a dog?" She thought about it and said, "Make Lowly. Make a blue Lowly." (Lowly is the worm character in Richard Scarry's Busytown book; thank God she asked me to make something relatively easy to make.) Then she asked for another one, and said, "Two Lowlies." Then she asked me to make a GREEN Lowly.

I don't know quite why, but these new things, however small, are exciting to me.

Monday, March 24, 2008

Oh my gosh

I just put Daisy to bed and I heard her babbling on the monitor, as she often does when we first put her down in the crib. At first I thought it really was just babble, but just now I heard, "Bye bye bears, bye bye chairs"--a variation on Goodnight Moon's "goodnight bears and goodnight chairs." So I think she was saying what she remembered from that book! Then--total silence. I think she went to sleep. Maybe she's developed her own little comforting ritual for before bed?

Hee

Just now I noticed Daisy was turning red and pooping, so I asked her if she was pooping. She said, "Bye bye poop." I assumed this meant she was pooping, so I asked her again: "Are you pooping?"

She said (and I quote, verbatim--this lasted about five minutes): "Bye bye, poop. Bye bye, Jack and Jill. Bye bye, Crooked Man. Bye bye, picked a peck. Bye bye, chairs. Bye bye, couch. Bye bye, drum. Bye bye, crocodiles. Bye bye, Mama. Bye bye, saucer. Bye bye, fox. Bye bye, children. Bye bye, Olivia." (Etc., etc., etc.]

Then she paused and said, "More poop."

Also to report:

--Today she said, "Put boots on." So I put this cute pair of boots on her and she said, "It's a kind of shoes."

--We went to Sutro Heights Park with our friends Robyn and Eli, and Daisy lay in the gazebo yelling, "I love gazebos! I love gazebos!" She has the most precise pronunciation, too. She says "Squirrel nutkin" with the greatest precision, for instance. It is really cute to hear. (She's reading it to herself right now: "Once a time, Squirrel Nutkin open the door.")

Oh, dear. I really want to record some of these things and I feel like they are getting away from me. So soon they'll be all over. She has such a variety of sentences now that it mostly feels useless to try to record them, but I should probably at least try to remember some of the idiosyncratic and amusing pronunciations and phrasings: like the way she says, "Hold it the mamas" when she wants me to hold her. She's funny, though: if she pronounces something improperly, she tries to correct herself, even if no one's correcting her. So, for example, she started saying "banya" for banana, and thinking it was cute (and ignoring the advice I've read about language development), I picked it up and started using it as a word, asking her, "Do you want some banya?" But today she said, "I want some banya." Then she paused, thought about it, and said very carefully, "Banana." She knew "banya" was wrong and wanted to correct herself, even though I wasn't prompting her.

Sunday, March 23, 2008

Easter morning

Daisy's Easter morning visiting Uncle Italious, Auntie Sylvia, and Nana Helen, with Mama, Dada, and Auntie Sam. [It was very cute how concerned she seemed when Italious left; she kept walking to the door and saying, "Uncle went away."] She sniffed the flowers a lot and commented, "No smell." She wanted to climb on Sylvia and Italious's table, and not only to hug Nana Helen's teddy bear, but to _ride_ it. And she did-- ride the teddy bear, that is-- although I don't have any pictures of it(I included one of her hugging it; sometimes hugging, for Daisy, means resting your head on something). She ate a million grapes at Nana Helen's and discovered the joy of snow globes.





Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Daisy's Day at San Juan Bautista

Daisy was such a sweetie today. She was uncomplaining on our car ride of about two hours each way; and she sat in her high chair, ate a quesadilla, and read books at lunch (we were shocked--she's been very fussy in restaurants since she started walking, not wanting to sit in her high chair, saying "Get down," etc.--but today she was very good at lunch). She loved San Juan Bautista. She was most excited about the "statues"(a new word she learned) and "gazebos" (one of her favorite words) and kept demanding to see more of each. She also enjoyed the flowers and the chickens. She went up to the Virgin Mary and said, "Who is the lady?" At one point she had climbed onto an old grave of a priest in a secluded little area of the mission garden, and Mark said (unfortunately), "I hope she doesn't do a dance." Well, she heard the word "dance" and instantly started doing a dance on the priest's grave. Needless to say we removed her immediately.








Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Overheard just now

Mark (prompting Daisy): Dada loves...?

Daisy: Daisy!

(correct answer, beams of approval)

Mark (prompting again): Daisy loves...?

Daisy: Fans.

Mark (trying again): Daisy loves...?

Daisy: Fans. Go round and round.

************************
It is true. Daisy loves ceiling fans.

She is starting to say "I love... [fill in the blank]." So far, her most popular answer IS, indeed, "I love Dada." However, she has also said "I love" the following things:

birds
water
Elmo
pengos (penguins)
ceiling fans

All true, by the way.

A couple friends from the 'hood...

...sharing a blueberry bagel and a little chat. Note: Henry is ten days younger than Daisy, so basically, they are the same age. And yet, their height is ever so different. My sweet little shorty!!!!

Monday, March 10, 2008

Daisy on Gymboree site



Isn't the dress beautiful? The photo shoot was at a beautiful winery in Sonoma, and my dad came out from Healdsburg and helped me take care of Daisy. There was a gorgeous lake there and Daisy and my dad did some bird-watching. This cute picture of the Daize is at the Gymboree website under "baby girl."

Labels:

Saturday, March 08, 2008

19-month girl


Daisy and Elise





Thursday, March 06, 2008

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!"