Hopefully earlier!!
I was by the time I was 6 or so I think... :-?
Soz, In my experience the readng thing is a quantum leap. Once they get it, they take it and run. Little soz is on the brink I suspect.
Hope so.
I'm going to write some random stuff, but one thing I will be doing is recording what happens in real time rather than pausing...
"Mama? I made Zoe some fruit salad. Can you give me a little bowl?"
[I type the above, she runs off]
Anyway, I usually pause... here she is.
"Can you give me a little bittle bowl?" [pounds me on shoulder as I type that.]
Just a sec...
[she's dancing around]
[got her the bowl]
So this is how I usually type everything when I'm here, with a zillion interruptions, and thought I'd document it for one post.
[now she's putting pieces of play plastic fruit in a bowl for her doll, Zoe]
[and then giving it to her doll, in the chair]
[pounds on arm]
"It's a big big FRUIT SALAD!!" [jumps happily]
[pounds on arm]
Yes sweetheart?
"She has a BIG bowl of FRUIT SALAD!"
Uh-huh!
[doing a dance around the ottoman]
"Where's my snack??"
[getting her food]
*away for 5 mins or so while I did that*
Forgot that I'd promised her a snack, now she's eating.
Anyway, this morning, I asked her how she'd slept and she said...
[just noticed that her hair was in her face, got up to get a barrette for her, felt her forehead, it was a little hot, I commented on it, she said "Oh it's just because I'm eating!" Hmm.]
... that she slept fine, and some other things, and then wound up with that she had laid in bed for a while with her eyes open and it was just so... [she paused and looked for the right word] restful. :-)
Then she said she thought she would close her eyes and go back to sleep but she changed her mind.
[I notice her looking out the window]
"Have you seen any goldfinches yet?" (New finch feeder.)
She says no.
When I got the barrettes I found a little Polly Pocket shoe in my purse (where the barettes were), put that here on the desk, she just found it and was poking my hand with it, now she's trying to read a note that'd made for the "restful" thing and singing, not sure what (I'm typing) and then got a pen and took the top off sigh and is asking me if she can draw on me... fine. She just drew a circle on my hand. Then a little face. Doing legs but they're going too far up my arm so I said "that's enough!" Now she's on my lap, better angle. Doing feet + toes. Her forehead's not so hot anymore.
This pen is too sharp, I just told her to get one of her washable markers. (We fairly frequently draw on each other with those.) ("OK just not too far." "Hey not the desk!")
Now she's drawing on her own hand. Oh I see, she's drawing something on her hand and then using it to...
[pounding on arm]
"I want to finger paint....!"
OK I think I'll stop here. (Read out loud, she's signing "stop stop stop!") Now she's kissing my arm because she knows I don't like the pounding business.
So now you know what's going on as I type!
Uh oh she's trying to sit on the keyboard byeeeeeee...
Soz, I just found this thread and it's great. When my kids say something really over the top I sometimes type it up and email it to my sisters so they can laugh too. One of my favorites is when my son woke up from a nap and looked down and said, "Mom! My wee-wee's a genius!" When I looked down I realized he was saying that because it had managed to find its way out of the little hole in his boxer shorts.
Lately he and my daughter have been obsessed with the hilarity of adding the word poop to everything. My daughter invented the word 'poople' for people. I've used it here at work a few times.
Hee hee!
We're doing stuff but had to come back with this one...
She put her feet under her dress and said "I don't have any feet!" I said oh no, should we get you some new ones? She said yes, there are feet at the feet store. I said OK let's go. She said no, you go, because I can't walk. [full pitiful treatment]
I haven't been recording her ASL puns, she does a lot of them. Yesterday, I went out and did some stuff and when I came back she said, in ASL, "I missed you." The sign for "miss" is to kind of poke your index finger into your chin. I signed back "I missed you, too" and then she gave me a big hug and kinda climbed on my lap. Then she poked her finger into my chin and grabbed my hand and put my finger on her chin... "we missed each other!"
(Does that make sense? Hard to describe.)
Sweet!
(Interesting too -- you can't do things like this in acoustic languages)
Yes, it makes perfect sense. And Thomas is right, it's fascinating. Tell us more when you have time.
I'm having a terrible time remembering other ones. (Why I do this, record things, it fades so fast.) I'll write more when I do.
*****
It's happened to me so many times, that I look at my daughter and am seized with panic that the person I see before me, who I love so much, is so temporary. She changes so much, so quickly. The person I am madly in love with changes into someone else... who I love even more. Who changes to someone else... But there are always things I do miss when she changes. After a good long time of being relieved to be done with it, I recently started really missing breastfeeding. She was so sweet, so tiny. Her smiles, the way she'd open her eyes very wide and kind of go cross-eyed.
Anyway, I am regularly seized with panic that what is so indelible and soul-sustaining now will be gone. That I won't remember, quite.
So an attempt to capture a random moment:
Today she decided to read me a book. We were on the bed -- she had her pink leotard on, her hair down. (It's now most of the way down her back, light brown, curly.) She sat there perfectly perpendiclar, her back straight up and her legs straight out, with no effort or strain. Her feet leaned towards each other a bit -- as she "read", they did fairly random things, like a couple of puppies -- bumping into each other, hooking one toe under another, leaning outwards, easing up until her legs were crossed and then back down. I was laying down on the bed and looking up at her; the little pointy chin, the round sweet cheeks, eyes darting under thick lashes, expressions washing across her forehead (concern, illumination, humor). She looked at each page intently and declaimed the contents, enunciating carefully, nodding imperceptably at the end of the page... yeah, that's right. Then a big production to turn the page -- bracing the book with her legs, convolutions to get out of the way of the turning page. Then a tiny happy "ah" sigh when the page was successfully turned, and starting again. And when finished, closing the book, saying "there!", patting it, crossing her legs, and looking at me proudly.
I take it that she's not actually reading? That she's at the stage of having memorized certain books page by page?
Oh, not really reading, no. :-) She does read stuff, but not whole books. This was a Richard Scarry and had lots of pictures, so she could just kinda say what was going on in the pictures.
The leotard reminded me of something -- I asked her to do something earlier today, she didn't respond, I "ahemmed" and she turned to me and said very sternly, "Just a minute, I'm trying to unwedge my wedgie!" The leotard is a bit small. Heh. (There is something about "wedgie" as uttered by a toddler trying to be stern that was too funny...)
I'm sure! And really, how many toddlers actually know what a wedgie is?
My son had never heard of a wedgie until one afternoon when we were wrestling on the floor and I gave him one. He learned quickly, and it became a favorite game for awhile. This was during the summer before he started second grade. I got a call from his new teacher the first week of school. He had taught this new game to his class. She was not amused.
<ROTFLMAO!>
wow! it's lovely, full of character
I like it too, very forward in stance!
Very cool. I especially noticed this "u-oh!" look in the cat's face. Perhaps she's looking at a dog that was walking around behind Sozlet's back while she drew the cat? Just speculating of course. In any case, you have a very talented daughter!
Argh, there was a story but I forgot. (What the cat was thinking. There was something uh-oh-ish about it.)
What I can't get over is how it's continuous lines -- at her developmental stage she's still supposed to be doing one circle for the head, then add a body, then add a tail, then add...
I'm in email contact with her preschool teacher, so now I get stories from her, too. For some reason I love this:
Quote:The first time I did a song or fingerplay with the number 3 in it, I held up my hand with the pinkie and thumb down and the other fingers up and [sozlet] told me that's not three, this is, and she showed me the correct sign. I now do 3 the way she taught me. She is very comfortable in our class and I so appreciate her information and hope to learn lots more from her.
I mean, there are 17 kids in her class, but she has no compunction about stopping things and making sure that the teacher knows the *right* way to do it... and meanwhile the teacher took it SO well! I'm really pleased with this school so far.
Love it!!!!!! I cant wait till Xain starts to draw and say cute stuff!!!!
xmom
