I have to blog this milestone

Daisy just sang her ABCs to me, every single letter! I had NO IDEA she could do this. None. She just came out with it. I didn't even know she knew HALF the alphabet. Now, this does not mean she can identify every letter in the alphabet; she can identify some, but not all. But how cool is it that she just sang all the letters to me? I wonder what else she knows!

Oh crap

She is reading in the dark. I can hear the pages turning. Will this girl ever go to sleep?

Postscript:
She is quiet now. I wonder if we shouldn't put books in her crib, though. Our hope is always that she'll read them in the morning, and she does sometimes. This morning she woke up and read in her crib and let us lie in bed until 7:15. For those who don't know... that is very, very late! :-)

Random Daisy-alia

I just put Daisy down awake, which just recently has been a bit of a problem. She made me sing both "Jolie Tambour," her regular bedtime song, and "When the Saints Go Marching In." I complied, but I think "Saints" is too rousing a number for a bedtime song. Come to think of it, "Jolie Tambour" is, too.

I am nervous because Mark's out so I did the routine on my own tonight and it just hasn't been a smooth ride lately. She was quiet for about five minutes but I heard her talking to herself a moment ago. Hmmm. Wonder if she'll go to sleep or if tonight's going to be a wild adventure.

Anyway. I was just going to blog that Daisy seems particularly concerned lately about memorizing my and Mark's schedules. She is confused about when we go to work, so when Mark leaves even for a moment (to throw out garbage), and it's 6:00 in the evening, she still asks, "Dada's going to work?" If he buckles her in the carseat, then disappears for a moment to walk around to the driver's side, she says, "What happened to Dada?" Then when he reappears two seconds later, "There's Dada!" with great joy.

She asked me if I was going to work today, and I said no, but she still seemed suspicious. At breakfast she said to me, "Have a good day. Miss me." This is some version of what I say when I leave to go to work (although I of course say I'll miss YOU). I had to keep insisting that I wasn't going to work. Life must seem awfully random and chaotic to a toddler, especially when you have parents with pretty irregular work schedules and comings and goings.

Other things from today: in her carseat, she suddenly shouted, "Oh my gosh, it's a poop!" (It was not, as it turned out.) The level of drama accorded this announcement was quite stunning. Daisy really puts a lot of expression into her voice, when she's reading or when she makes various announcements. I can only gather that this is what *I* sound like to her. It's often funny because, of course, she has no sense of the proper contexts in which to be awestruck and dramatic, versus what is a more mundane occurrence, warranting a milder response. So, for example, the other day she exclaimed about a flock of pigeons, "The birds are flying! Oh my God!"

She has started complimenting me on various feats. For example, the annoying plastic circular thingie fell out of the Diaper Champ, I stuck it back it in, and Daisy was right there to say, "Very good!" in a highly approving tone. This makes me aware of how often I comment on HER actions (positively). Maybe it's not such a good thing-- I wouldn't want her to feel as though her every action is evaluated, and even a positive evaluation could do that.

A BIG first today: when asked my name, she said "Sarah." Twice. She has called Mark by his name for a long time now, but always resisted when asked who I was. I was just Mama. I guess this is a little sad... not that she'll stop calling me "Mama," of course. But I have to say, it was kind of thrilling to hear her say my name.

Daisy is totally into singing. She sings by herself and she accompanies me when I sing. She wanted to sing "I'll Fly Away" with me today. It was a bit difficult as I found myself mumbling every time I came to a direct reference to death. Hmmm.

When Daisy gets upset, she sometimes cries, "I want to bite...[fill in the blank]." Now, I want to explain that she does NOT bite. She bit me once, I showed her how upset I was, and it has never happened again. But when she is upset, she tells us she WANTS to bite. It is kind of disconcerting. Today when she got slightly upset by a fall she cried, "I want to bite the cars!" (There was a busy street just outside where we were.) That is rather odd.

Daisy is very affectionate with her books and stuffed animals, and also with any random object that strikes her fancy. She likes to say, with great expression in her voice, "He is SOOOOO cute." She will also comment(about dogs, especially), "He is very lovable."

Well, that is all for now.

Maybe...now!

Daisy used to ask us if she could watch a video and we'd often say, "Maybe later--after dinner." So she picked up on this and she'd carry out the whole conversation on her own; she'd say, "I want to watch a video. Maybe later, after din-ins." It was very convenient. We didn't even have to say anything. But she is on to us now. She said it the other day. "Want to watch video. Maybe later." Then she paused, stopped to think about it, and said, "Maybe now." It seems we are going to have to get cleverer.

Funny

We have a Virginia Woolf refrigerator magnet; I didn't realize Daisy knows its name. She calls it "Ginny Woolf." Today we found her giving the magnet rides down her slide, yelling, "Wheeee! Go down, Ginny Woolf!"

This amuses me.

Ratting out Grandma

I know my mother has a good enough sense of humor to forgive me for this post. But I must report that on her last visit, she:

A) Gave me a memoir to read in which three young children (two babies and one toddler Daisy's age) die horribly (she claimed she had forgotten these details, which are central to the narrative);

and

B) Put on a "Babar" DVD for Daisy in which baby Babar's mother is shot and killed in the first half hour, leaving baby Babar wandering around the fallen body crying, "Mama! Mama!" Did we screen the video ahead of time? Noooo. She saw it unfold just as we did. We forwarded on to the next scene as quickly as we could, but pretty soon the elephants were having a war with the rhinoceroses--a big, bloody battle scene--and Daisy asked us to turn it off even before we could respond.

Bad Mama! Bad Gommy!

Postscript:
It's not that I absolutely refuse to read books in which children die anymore. It's just... I have to admit, hard on me to read true accounts of toddler deaths. I fully intend to finish the book, though, which is really good.

One last thing

I have to add this. I have been kind of blown away lately by how much Daisy understands what I'm saying to her and how... real and grown-up our conversations are. In that last month or so, I have noticed that if I don't understand what she's saying and I ask for clarification, she provides more information or tries to say the same thing a different way till I get it. And I almost always do. A couple examples: a week ago or so, she kept saying something that sounded like "Happig! Happig!" I told her I didn't understand. She clarified, "Old MacDonald happig." From that I got that she wanted me to sing "Old Mac Donald had a pig."

I realize it might seem like a coincidence, but it happens all the time now; I ask her to explain, and she expands on the thought, adding more words, or using different ones. Yesterday she pointed at our watering can and named it ("watering can"). I was surprised she knew that expression and I mumbled, to myself more than to her, "I wonder how she knows that, 'watering can'!" She then said, "Peter Rabbit jumped in the watering can." That was how she knew the expression, of course-- from her Peter Rabbit book. She is totally amazing to me. Or maybe we just underestimate these wee people!

Rough night

Well, shortly after I wrote that last post, Daisy started crying in her crib and then threw up, prodigiously. It was the biggest throw-up of her life, I'd say. It was everywhere--all over her (of course), in many places in the crib, on the floor, on the rug. It had even managed to wrap itself around the crib bars in places you didn't think it would get to. Needless to say, it was a long night. Cleaning the room took awhile, and I decided she'd better have a real bath to get all the barf off. I scrubbed her pretty well with a towel, but some of the barf was deeply embedded in her hair.

She didn't seem feverish, so we think she over-ate at dinner (a rarity) and got an upset stomach. I had never seen her eat so much dinner-- many helpings of ravioli and pesto (which she devoured-- are you not supposed to give a baby pesto? Oh dear). Then she drank a particularly big bottle of milk before bed. She seemed in a perfectly fine mood today and not sick at all.

Oh, and a small but significant first, described forthwith. Today she asked me to sing a song I don't know very well ("The Animals Came In Two by Two..."). She kept prompting me to do the next number (one, two, three) and when I got to four, I paused, because I really didn't know what the animals did when they came in four by four. When I paused, Daisy prompted me with the line: "Stuck in the door!" I was impressed.

Since she knows these songs better than I do, I have been encouraging her to sing them her own darn self, to her animals. (I've also been encouraging her to read her favorite books to her animals).

One more thing: Daisy's new favorite game, unfortunately for me, is "soup." This is an extremely messy game. I know, I know-- it is my own fault. I have been allowing her some liberties with water play, because I think it's good for kids, theoretically. But now she begs to be given a cup or a bowl of water or milk and a spoon; she stirs the "soup" vigorously and feeds it to her animals. There is much spillage and mess involved. I am the Bad Mama for messy, disruptive games. Another fairly recent favorite is "drums." This one needs no explanation, I suppose, once I tell you that the "drums" are metal pots. I can't help it, though-- it is so funny. She bangs her drums with wooden spoons and sings "Oh Susannah" and a bunch of nursery rhymes she's memorized. She sings them pretty tunelessly, but she gets almost all the words. And she takes it SO seriously. Today in Sutro Heights Park she "sat a picnic" in the grass and said to me gravely, "Where are my drums?"

I am unapologetic toward my upstairs neighbor because you should hear how loudly he plays HIS music, till late at night!

We just put Daisy to bed

and we can hear her flipping the pages of a book...in her crib...in the pitch dark. Hm.

Side note: Today while on the diaper changing table, Daisy asked me to sing both "Happy birthday, diaper change" and "Happy birthday, poop."

Daisy and Henry at the beach

This just cracks me up... they were having a lot of fun, but their expressions are so disgruntled in this picture (taken a few weeks ago when it was hot and sunny). I know what Daisy is thinking: Mom, first you put me in a skimpy dress because it was so hot; then you panicked when the sun started beating down on me and slathered me from head to toe in sunscreen; then as soon as I went in the sand IT ALL STUCK TO ME-- totally uncomfortable; then you insisted I wear a sweatshirt and a sunhat and in a few minutes you are about to put pants on me, too.

Clearly, I am not a hot sun person. I hardly know what I'm doing when it starts shining down so strongly. Look how much better prepared Henry is!

Water mountain

is what Daisy calls a fountain.

Grrrr Pennsylvania

No words about that right now.

But I am reporting THIS: Daisy sat on the coffee table, fell off, bumped her head, started crying, and wailed, "I want to bite the TV!"

Yes!

Daisy just said, "Barack Obama!" I am so proud of her.

I started exclaiming, "Barack Obama! Daisy just said Barack Obama!" in tones of delight.

This caused my mother, who's awaiting the results of the Pennsylvania primary, to rush agitatedly into the room saying, "Barack Obama? Did you say Barack Obama? Have you heard something??"

Too bad that my adorable news was disappointing in this case. No great news to report (yet) but I am hopeful.

Speck

Today Daisy gave a name to a stuffed animal for the first time. This is a milestone, so I'm recording it. Mark asked her the name of her stuffed dog (a kind gift, and very much appreciated, from Bill Hamilton) and she said, "Speck." She's been calling him "Speck" all day, too, so apparently she meant it. She said at one point, "Find my dog named Speck!" So there you have it. Speck. And now I have to go get her before she breaks her neck falling off the coffee table.

State of the Daisy, Part II

A new behavior this morning (or at least it's the first time I've noticed it): she announced that she was going to read a book to her stuffed dog. She fetched the dog, sat him in her lap, and read a Babar book to him, a bit awkwardly because she had to keep the dog clutched in one arm and turn the pages of this large-ish book with the other. It was cute. Daisy's narrations of her books are pretty funny, and so I've been trying to capture them on video--not easy, because when she sees me filming her she usually asks to watch herself on the camera. So I have to sneak up on her.

I wish I could describe fully what these narrations are like. First of all, whenever we come home from an outing, Daisy marches straight to her room, sits down on the floor, and starts pulling books off the shelf. Then she sits, completely self-sufficient for long periods of time, and "reads" her books out loud. Her readings are hilarious. She babbles on and on, mixing together real parts of the books (her memory is almost unbelievably good) with references to things she did today, allusions to favorite songs, and other preoccupations. So she'll be reading a Babar book and you will hear mentions of Henry and Dena, like they are characters in the book. Or she'll emphasize a new favorite phrase of some kind, like, "The elephants are walking around the block!" She used that one a lot for awhile because it was something she was doing a lot with Mark.

She sometimes becomes so excited by her books that she hugs and kisses them, and (more bizarrely) bites them. I am trying to discourage the biting.

She also finds occasion to weave her books into real life. The funniest one recently happened while she was playing with a little boy named Silas at a baby shower we attended. He was playing with Daisy's ball and Daisy, wanting it back, said, "Stop, thief!" a few times (she learned this expression from Peter Rabbit). Daisy feels very intensely about her books and has them more committed to memory than I would have thought possible. There are a few books, the simpler ones, that she can "read" almost exactly from beginning to end (her "Grandma's Coming to See You" book, for instance).

This raises the question of when she will be ready to learn to read; my mother taught me early, when I was between 2 and a half and 3 and a half, so I know it's possible that she could learn fairly soon. But I am not so confident about it for a few reasons. Mainly, it's that she seems so easily frustrated and to lose her patience with a task she can't immediately master. I'm really hoping this is just a phase and not indicative of how she'll be later, because it will certainly make a lot of things in life hard. Usually it comes up when I am trying to help her with a fine motor-skills task; she tries it, but if she hasn't succeeded within a few seconds, she either moves on (fine) or screams loudly and tries to bite something (not so fine). Well, there is no doubt that I would not try to push reading on her before she's ready. The only reason it comes to mind is that she does love books so intensely and I had learned early myself.

Lately, too, Daisy sometimes lets me know that she'd rather read a book by herself than hear my reading of it. In the last couple days it happened twice. I was reading a book to her, and midway through, she announced, "Daisy's book, Daisy reads it" and took the book away to read by herself. I am sure her versions are more exciting than mine.

Other favorite activities: playing with Play-Doh ("make a green Lowly!")-- we usually make a flat surface and then she makes designs on it with her various Playdoh implements; going OUTSIDE (very, very big with Daisy--any outdoor activity); listening to music and singing; going down the slide (she claims she likes swings but almost never wants to be confined in one anymore); kissing friends (but not hugging, for some reason); "building a tunnel" with paper bricks; climbing on benches and chairs; and dancing! Daisy's dance is beautiful. I should try to record it. It involves throwing her hands in the air and doing a series of squats, mostly. Her favorite song of all time is "Oh, Susanna," though she has many others.

Well, that's Daisy calling from the crib. Bye.
PS
Oh--I also need to record that Daisy is trying very hard to JUMP and makes jumping moves constantly, and actually got a little bit off the ground the other day!

State of the Daisy, Part I: almost 21 months

It's been a long time since I've written one of these but I don't want to let myself neglect them too much; I know I'll regret it one day and treasure what I did write. So, my usual disclaimer: this will be long and dull and probably uninteresting to anyone but me.

At almost 21 months (April 20), Daisy is increasingly funny and surprising, with some definite hints of toddler temper and willfulness, too. She talks a lot and with greater complexity, though when you spend every day with her it's easy to take this for granted and not recognize the progress. To try to summarize where she is right now with talking: she forms long sentences and she can almost always explain or tell me what she wants. As an example, she'll say, "Daisy wants to sit in the rocking horse with the cow." So she is really putting together different parts of a sentence well now. I may have reported this already, but she is also able to recite entire nursery rhymes, verbatim or close to it: Humpty Dumpty, Georgy Porgey, etc. She sings now, too, along with her CDs and can sort of carry a tune on some of them.

What's a bit strange to me is that despite having this verbal ability, she still gets frustrated and has mini temper-tantrums. The worst of it is her SCREAM. When she is the slightest bit frustrated, she lets out a terribly loud, skull-crushing scream and if it happens to be in public, I can see the pain on strangers' faces, increasing my own pain and embarrassment. I have tried reprimanding her, but it doesn't seem to do any good. I wonder if I need to be reading up more on disciplinary tactics. With a child this age, I'm not sure how effective that would be-- but it still might be worth trying. As it is, I try to tell her not to scream, calmly but firmly, and explain how painful it is to others' ears.

Again, what's odd is that if I ask her to explain what is wrong, she usually can-- making me wonder why she has to scream in the first place. For example: today she seemed agitated and upset when I tried to put her Playdoh mat (the "Playdoh map," as she calls it) on the table. She kept trying to take it off the table and screaming. I had no idea why, since she loves taking out the "Playdoh map." I asked her to explain why she was upset and then she said, "It's a blanket!" She wanted to take the "map" off the table and wrap it around herself like a blanket. Okay; fine. No problem. I just wish she could have told me that to begin with.

Unsurprisingly, the quick frustration and screaming is worse when she's tired, and I was wondering this morning if that's part of what's happening: that sleep deprivation is piling up and augmenting and making her more irritable. She's been going to bed too late (between 8:30 and 9) and waking up at an ungodly hour--before six, for the last few weeks. We haven't made it to 7 in recent memory. I suspect this is not enough sleep for her, and that she's crankier and quicker to crack as a result.

She doesn't exactly have full-on tantrums yet. The scream, as terrible as it is, ends quickly and I can usually distract her easily and get her on another track. She doesn't fling herself on the floor, kicking and screaming and crying (though I have a fearful sense that this might be the next stage!). So the pain, while intense, is at least short-lived. She is also quite demanding and specific about what she wants, which I fear is the down side of the verbal ability. She wants to dictate to me, not only that I must sing, but that I must sing particular songs; she often tells me exactly what she wants, in no uncertain terms, and then I have to cushion the blow if it can't happen! Luckily, as mentioned above, she is fairly resilient at this age.

She is a picky eater and doesn't seem to like a lot of usually desirable foods, like mashed potatoes. She loves fruit of all kinds and (thank God) broccoli and peas, but few other veggies. She likes meat, which is unfortunate in a way because I'm not such a big fan of preparing it or slicing it up, but she likes it so I'm trying to think of more meat dishes to make. She loves her bath and so that's never a struggle between us, and she has returned to being good about going to bed, with a new little routine we've created: we sing her a favorite song while she lies in her crib, before we turn off the lights and leave. She loves the ritual so much that she sometimes asks to go in the crib and hear the song. If she didn't wake up so early, I'd call her a model sleeper. She's also good in the car, although she can be demanding about which songs we play on the CD player. If it's one she doesn't feel like hearing, she commands, "Press! Press!" until we come to one she likes, and then she comments, "THAT'S a good one." I would say she seems ahead of her years in having very strong aesthetic preferences!

More in volume II of the update.

Duh

Okay. I am less obsessed with Scramble now. Remember how I posted that I was proud of myself for coming in 9th in a room of 300 players? I was convinced there were all these amazingly sharp Scramble players out there, these super-mega-Boggly-geeks that I should only be so lucky as to crack into the top 25. Weeellll... I have since discovered the "word hints" clickie. There it was, sitting right in front of my face, but being me, I never thought to CLICK on it. It would seem that when you click this clickie, free words appear and help you increase your score. It points out patterns on the board that you didn't see by yourself. You don't have an infinite number of these cheaties, but you get some points towards them every day (apparently).

The first time I used this button, even sparingly, I came in first in the Live Games. I think I see how it works now. Duhhhh.

It feels all spoiled for me now. And to think I was using my actual BRAIN! What a waste.

Daisy this morning

Today Daisy said, "Play ball with the couch!" (throwing the ball at the couch). Then, "Play ball with the chicken!" (pointing at a plastic chicken sitting on the couch). "Are you ready, chicken? No! It's a problem."

I also liked this one--she approached me and said, "Sit on Mama's lap, darling."

Sometimes her verbal explosion makes little sense. She likes a video of our friends' son, Leo, and was demanding it this morning in this way: "Find Leo's Mamas! Find Leo's Daddy! Find Leo's daisies! Find Mama's Daddy! Find Daddy's Leos! Find Daddy's Mamas!" Etc. Very odd.

Do I really swear that much?

Daisy just woke up from her nap and the first thing I heard on the baby monitor was, "Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ!" (Emphasis on the second word.) Oh dear....

I must be officially a geek

Many posts ago, I was troubled to discover I am NOT as much of a nerd/geek/dork as I thought I was, based on the nerd/geek/dork tests out there on the internet (though the fact that I TOOK the tests at all must make me... something nerdy. Or dorky. I can never tell which is which). But I think this latest event must improve my geekdom at least a little bit: this evening I went into the SUPER nerd/geek/dork Scramble "Live Games" room... this is the room where the best Scramble players in internetland play game after game after game of Scramble. These people are OBSESSED. And let me tell you, they are GOOD. They know every fake Scramble word out there that it's possible to know and they type faster than the speed of light. I am waaaaaay out of their league. I (in my own humble defense) have not been playing online Scramble very long, and I am not obsessed, and I don't spend hours and hours practicing online like they do; but I managed to come in 9th in a room of 300 players and one of the Super Scramblers actually challenged me to a one-one-one. She CREAMED me but I was proud of myself for doing even as well as I did, PLUS, the fact that she challenged me at all greatly helps my geek factor.

Now if only my friends would play more games with me....

Twinkle, twinkle, little tree

So I have mentioned before that Daisy can sing, word for word, some of her favorite songs and nursery rhymes, like "Baa Baa Black Sheep," "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star," "Mary Had a Little Lamb," etc. But her newest thing is to make a joke by inserting a new word into the song. Yesterday she sang "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Tree" to us, and a few days before that she invented "Three Little Kleenex Jumping on the Bed" (the original is "Three Little Monkeys"). She actually carried through the entire song with "Kleenex" instead of "monkeys" and at the end she said, "No more Kleenex jumping on the bed!" with the appropriate tone of reproach.

I think I might be weaning (finally)

I have wanted to for quite awhile--though with some feelings of sadness that I didn't expect to have. Anyway, every time I tried, it backfired. She seemed to want to continue so badly, and it was torture trying to stop it. I kept thinking in vain of all the people who said they weaned "organically," that it just seemed to taper off of its own accord... that was not happening to me.

Then, recently, I suddenly noticed that we hadn't been nursing so often anymore. In fact, I think it's been about a week that we've just been nursing once: in the morning, which is better than at night, I think. (She doesn't need it to go to sleep.) She still asks for it during the day sometimes, but is usually pretty easy to distract and get on another track. So: we will see. I don't want to count any chicks before they are weaned, but this seems to be headed in the right direction. If my luck continues, maybe I will have her weaned by the time she's two-- after having set my goal, originally, to wean her by one! Only a year late; tee hee.

Fun at the lagoon

I am so glad Dena remembers her camera since I never do! I borrowed these pictures from her blog; it was such a fun afternoon at the lagoon near the Palace of Fine Arts and the Exploratorium. The kids (Henry, Elise, and Daisy) loved to run down the hill toward the lagoon, over and over again.

This morning I wasn't feeling well

Daisy: Get out of Mama's bed, Mamas.

Me: Honey, Mamas isn't feeling well.

Daisy: Mama has a boo-boo?

Me: Yes. Mama has a boo-boo.

Daisy: Make a tape.

She wanted me to get some tape and fix the boo-boo, like we do when her books get boo-boos (rips in the pages). She actually looked concerned about me and suggested the tape remedy several times. Most concrete sign yet of developing empathy and compassion?