First Lollipop and the YouTube Monster

Starting out this post with a pet peeve: People who don't bring anything for their children to play with at Doctor's offices. It's a crime, I tell you! How can people honestly expect a young child to sit still and be bored for a whole hour while they wait to be called back? It's so unrealistic and it never works out that way. People need to bring toys for their kids. Don't leave the house without some form of distraction, ever!!

Obviously we went to the Doctor's office today. A-chan was very well behaved and enjoyed playing and drawing her letters. But when it came to letting the doctor examine her dada she got a little uncooperative. She insisted on standing between his feet! Luckily the doctor was unfazed by this and offered her a bribe. It didn't work very quickly because she had absolutely no idea what a lollipop was and kept refusing it. I finally talked her into having the candy and happiness resumed it's normal course. At least normal for a doc's office. A-chan very much liked the lollipop, her very first one.

The YouTube Monster started out so innocuously. A little anime music video that Ketu was watching on his computer and that A-chan immediately latched onto as the bestest thing ever. After a while he got tired of using his computer to show the video over and over and over...so he put a link to it on her computer and showed her how to work it. I'd swear we listened to it 20 times today alone. She loves to dance to it but has yet to do the moves as they are in the video.

The Thunder, It Rumbles

It seems like storming and thunder always happen when it's either naptime or bedtime. We never have thunder at say...dinnertime when she's awake anyway. Nope, it's always right when we were going to put her to bed. Tonight was a pretty spectacular storm.

As a kid I remember always being terrified of storms. In fact, that fear didn't totally go away until after my own child was born. Jane Yolen is right - one can't be afraid when one has someone to protect. And that is what I wanted for A-chan. Not protection exactly, but security. I didn't want her to be afraid of thunder, of bad weather. Children just are sometimes, I do understand that. But I also think that a lot of what children perceive about their world comes from the adults around them. If I were to suddenly react as if she ought to feel afraid, she will respond as she thinks I expect. (Don't worry, honey, it's just thunder, it can't hurt you.) On the other hand, if I treat the thunder as something interesting and enjoyable to listen to (wow, that one was really cool, what did you think of it?) - how would she react? Tonight we found out.

When I told her that thunder is the sound of clouds talking to each other she suddenly perked up and began asking questions rather than clinging to me. "When the thunder is really loud it's because the clouds are really excited about something and get loud just like you do when you're excited." I said. Within 30 seconds we had a discussion going about what the clouds might be excited about and wowing over each rumble. There was no need to soothe her at all. Here are a couple of the things that we came up with:

"The Clouds excited about DragonCon, they be purple jawas with A-chan and have pink jawa socks and feet."

"The clouds are excited about their birthday party and want a pink cake!"

At this point the discussion took a completely different path and birthday cakes became the subject. I talked about my plans for my birthday cake this year, said last year had flowers, and I thought this year it should be a star wars cake. I was then told that her cake should be SW and mine should have blue flowers on it, lol.

Overall I was excited about how well my strategy worked! And I was continually kicking myself over the fact that I should have gotten with it sooner and used the same type of tactic with the public restroom. But in that situation I did everything wrong that I could have and perhaps created the fear that she exhibited in the public toilet. (Luckily we're all past that and the public toilet isn't a trial anymore, she's okay with it!)

Phase Shift!

Suddenly things are different. Instead of coloring everything one color, coloring by numbers is happening! It seems like such a little thing, but we've been trying to introduce the concept of different colors in one picture for such a long time. And we turned around to find that she's doing color by numbers in her LEGO computer game perfectly...and wonder when did that happen?! My opinion is that the Brainy Baby Art video has sooo much to do with it. I didn't think it would make such a huge difference at first. A-chan loved watching it, though. She asked to see it every day, calling it the Baby Painting video.

The first thing we noticed was that she was suddenly obsessed with drawing broken lines, straight lines and was beginning to make the connection to drawing shapes and things like balloons and spiders. She really wanted to draw all the time! Not just the formless scribbles that she had been doing, she was going for true drawings. And then came the color by numbers change. It wasn't even a learning process, it was an instant change. One day she was doing the entire picture in one color then redoing it in the next color. Then the next day she was doing it by the numbers without any hesitation, almost as though she'd known that was how it should be done before but just didn't feel like it at the time.

What is so amazing about it all is how quickly the changes happened. We kind of felt left behind and adrift as the things we'd been working on with her have all been conquered - so what do we do now? It's also just awesome to watch it happen, we're so lucky to be able to be with her all the time so that we can really see exactly when things change!

Here are some of her creative spiders (drawn with chalk on her dad's card table) with eyes and mouths and buttons!

Imaginary Friends

We've had two friends visiting the last couple of days. Satsuki & Mei from 'My Neighbor Totoro'. For one brief moment I have a glimpse at what it would be like to have 3 children. It was a scary moment :) But it was lots of fun to cater to A-chan's whim when Satsuki and Mei needed to be lifted up to sit on the counter and help make breakfast. I peeled bananas for them and fed everybody oatmeal. Exclaiming over imaginary fridge artwork was interesting: I had no idea what 'Satsuki and Mei' had drawn and had to be very vague in my replies. "Wow, that's a nice drawing" and "She's very creative!" got used most often, I believe.

I'm not sure at what age or developmental stage children usually have imaginary friends. Is this a normal occurence or a sign that A-chan needs more interaction with other children? At the moment I'm not worried about it. But I'm realizing just how little I know about toddler development and what to expect. I've been focusing so much on potty training that I haven't found out what else might be changing soon.

One thing that has remained constant, though, is how much she loves musical instruments. Mine, hers, woodwind, string...it doesn't matter they are all good. She's always been enchanted with playing my harps but has also more recently found my old, old, old, ancient, high-school flute. The concept of blowing across the hole instead of covering the whole thing with one's mouth is lost on her so far, but we're working on it!

Cutest thing ever!

My baby can Riverdance! OMG we were blown away by the cuteness. After finishing up our last child-friendly anime series (Kamichu! It was great and perfect for a toddler - no violence, no hideously annoying characters or loudness, just very sweet and interesting.) we've started watching a random assortment of things. Last night was the BBC Celts series and to follow up tonight we had Riverdance.

I wasn't sure how she was going to react to it. Predictably she wasn't that interested in the Celts documentary but I hoped that she would enjoy the dancing, cause she loves to dance. About five minutes into the show she suddenly proclaimed, "I can do that!" and up she jumped and did! She was so cute, with her hands on her hips and jumping in little hops. Ketu rushed over and grabbed the videocamera and got some good footage for which I will be eternally grateful.

A-chan's other newest passion: drawing numbers, particularly number eights.

Purple Jawa Update

The PJP is moving pretty smoothly at the moment. The cloak and hood are finished with one minor bit of velcro/ hook and eye needing to be added! The Small Highness has tried on both and found them to be satisfactory.

Since I am expecting her to be excited about the costume and actually wearing it for maybe 10 minutes before getting too hot or bored, I'm working on an under-dress which isn't constructed with too much Jawa fashion in mind but hopefully will be comfy to wear. I want it to be very loose to give her room to breathe and maybe even have it still fit next year. When she tried it on for me this evening she said, "can it be a little smaller?"

The main problem that I am having at the moment is how to make the belt of pouches that Jawa typically wear. It would be easy if we used leather but we don't! So I'm thinking faux leather and hand making it myself which seems tedious but I'm willing to try. The other option is to use fabric to make it. Whatever I do it won't look much like the authentic stuff, not that I'm trying that hard to be authentic, so I'm not going to worry about it too much.

After that the next problem to solve is a mask and eyes. But we'll think about that....sometime later, yep.

It's been a lot of fun working on the costume, I'm surprised a little at how much I've been enjoying it. And truly amazed at the fact that A-chan still is all excited about it. She still says excitedly that she's going to be a purple jawa for dragoncon. Almost every day she asks me if I'm working on her costume. Somehow I'd always thought that a two year old would forget about something that was a) so far in the future & b) so esoteric as a costume that she 'made up'. (though the costume is wholly inspired by star wars and even SWG, you don't see purple jawas anywhere in the movies - it's a totally random idea)

I am a little stressed about the fact that it isn't as well-sewn as it could be and it's not as authentic as I personally would like it. But I keep reminding myself that it's okay - she's only 2 years old.

Traveling

The question at the end of my last post got summarily answered this past weekend as we traveled to Alabama for a one-night stay over. We took our potty with us. In my defense I claim this to have been a special circumstance where we were visiting friends of A-chan who were a little older and potty training and whose good influence in that area we were hoping that A-chan would be inspired by. And it did seem to have helped. Not to mention she had a ton of fun.

We also got to try out her new travel bed which is an awesome invention that worked like a charm. I was a little worried about her playing in it instead of going to sleep the first time but she was so exhausted after playing with the three girls that she collapsed in seconds. Showing it to the girls was scheduled to take place the following morning so that there wouldn't be any conflict at bedtime so it stayed well hidden during the day. But the next morning A-chan wanted them all to go play in it with her and amazingly enough they all fit! (barely, lol) Then we had the excuse available that it needed to be packed up so we could put it in the car - a nice way to cut off the playtime in the bed if necessary, though they pretty much got tired of it after a little. Sleeping for us was a bit more difficult since about 3 minutes after we turned off the lights she woke up long enough to order them turned back on. We're not used to sleeping with the lights on all night but we left them on anyway. I think next time we'll be prepared with a nightlight!

Potty Progress!

W00t! 3 successful potty attempts in one day!! We're definately beginning to make some progress, yahoo :D There are two keys to our recent success, I think. First, I'm making a point to ask her to go potty a lot more than I used to. Basically I ask after every meal and whenever I think about it other times. Second, I leave the bathroom. It's like magic. I leave the room and about 5 minutes later she uses the potty. Tonight I asked if she wanted me to stay or to leave. "You can go if you want to. And I'll call you." was the response.

My mother brought up an interesting question the other day. She wanted to buy a potty for A-chan to have at her house, just like the one that we have here. I wondered if that wouldn't give A-chan unreasonable expectations, that she would start asking specifically for 'her' potty everywhere we went instead of getting used to different potties at different places. And if that were the case, but in her best interest to have a potty everywhere we go that is just for her, should we get a portable one that we could take anywhere?

I personally would prefer that she get used to all kinds of potties in all kinds of situations. For example, carrying a portable potty around with us at a convention isn't really an option. And I'm pretty sure that airlines wouldn't let us take it on a plane. I guess I see it just like restaurants. We try very hard to make sure that A-chan is exposed to a large variety of foods and flavors so that we can go to just about any restaurant and she will eat happily. Shouldn't it be the same way with the potty?

Kumon Workbook Luv

Educational materials that I really love are few and far between at this point. Mainly due to the fact that I haven't been searching all that much for them yet. But a lot of what I've seen isn't any fun. We picked up the first Kumon book, Tracing, last year and started working with A-chan using her finger to follow the lines. Recently she progressed to using a pen from a pencil and is doing great! The best part is that she asks to do the exercises. We couldn't get her to stop today and that was wonderful. I love these books! The 1-30 book and the Uppercase letters book are the other two that we have right now. They do a great job of teaching and it's really fun to watch her start drawing the numbers. (We haven't really tried drawing letters yet.) The five and the eight are a bit problematic and frustrating for everyone involved, lol.



The grocery store that we like to go to gives out free balloons to youngsters and of course, as soon as she understood that concept A-chan started asking for one as we pulled into the parking lot. The latest one had to be yellow with a yellow teddy bear weight and string. Within a day it lost most of it's lift and is a bit depleted. A-chan's friend KayKay showed her the neatest trick with her pinwheel this past weekend - holding it over an a/c vent while the air is blowing makes it turn really fast. And yesterday A-chan applied the same theory to the ailing balloon to make it fly up in the air. It's just so cool because it has this point where it just sits and hovers in the air above the vent. A-chan is overcome with joy about the whole thing and spent a long time today enjoying the interaction. She keeps wanting us to come see it, though and verify that the balloon is flying all by itself. We finally convinced her to see if the balloon could fly over the vent that happened to be in the same room as us so we could just turn around and see it instead of walking all the way into the other room every 5 minutes :D