Wednesday, 29 July 2015

Things she says, part 2

Another birthday related post. This time of random things she's said over the past year since part 1

starting with some older things...

Rockabye baby inna tree top
When the wind blows the cradle will rock
When the bow breaks the cradle will fall
And baby hurts herself and cries

I need to propalite my frownity in order to be patient.

You need to propalite your frownity?

yes

while playing with fridge magnets

That's an L, your mother's name begins with L

My mother's name is mamma. M is for mamma.

That's not her name, it's what you call her. Her name begins with L.

M is for mamma.

Followed up with me trying to explain how the Knight's song's name is not what it's called

It's time to sleep, you need to lie down. It's time to sleep.

Thank you for offering but I don't want to sleep.

blah blah blah Gooseberry

Gooseberry?

Yes. Gooseberry. It's a type of berry.

Duck cherry. Not gooseberry.

Let's go to the willow trees.

Why do you like willow trees?

Because people don't like willow trees.

When reading the girl a story about a giant

What's that?

A giant.

A giant of what?

Ummmmn ... good point. A troll?

Draw a lake of tears.

Okaaaaay...

And draw a duck in the lake.

Okay

I draw a lake with a duck and a little girl crying

What's she doing

She's crying

Why

You can't have a lake if tears without someone being very very sad and crying.

Oh...

Draw a man to cheer her up.

I want a rice cake!

I'm not going to give you a rice cake

Why not?

You're holding one in your right hand

I'm eating it now. chomp

Dinosaurs say roar

What else to they say?

They say deep voice good day. bow

Then they roar again

When I am an old man I will go in the house. A very big house... And I will eat. I will be very kind.

Watching the Daily show talking about Justin Beiber

No Jon Stuart! No! Stop!

...we stop the daily show

What's wrong?

He's talking wrong

What?

He's talking wrong about people

wrong about people? Do you like Justin Beiber?

Beiber.


I slouch in the chair and let out an audible sigh. The girl strokes my hair, looks at me sweetly and says you're welcome"

Then she says sit up straight"



I have a toy elephant that blows air out of its nose.

wait. don't you? What do you blow out of your nose?

Snot!



I catch her drawing on a chair and take away her crayon

you can have the crayon back if you say you're sorry

I'm sorry

do you mean it?

No.


about capes and flying

you need a cape to fly

i have a cape, I can't fly... I mean I can fly on a plane, but the cape doesn't make me fly.

you can fly with a cape... and you can fly on a plane.

What happens if I wear a cape on a plane?

The master of the aeroplane will grab the cape and run away with it. She will snatch it and say that's not a good idea.

And she will say This is not available in planes


What's that flour doing on the road?

I can't see what's she's referring to.

Do you mean flower as in the stuff that grows in a box of soil, or flour the stuff you make biscuits out of?

The stuff that grows into biscuits.



during a conversation about emotions

Do youknow any other emotions?

Slinky!

Slinky's not an —

Bounce. Bounce bounce bounce bounce repeat

and finally

Three little kittens lost thier mittens and didn't know where to find them
Leave them alone and they'll come home dragging their thumbs behind them

Tuesday, 28 July 2015

Three, a review

The girl is about to hit four so now's as good a time as any to go through the past year. Every child is different so none of this is likely to apply to anyone else. This is more of a general note since I've hardly blogged at all here this past year.

The biggest event was her starting nursery. She really liked all the books and toys and playing with other children. It made me feel less guilty the lack of arts and crafts I did with her at home. On the other hand... It's not the physical viruses that went around at nursery that were a problem, it was the memes. Princesses, fairies, Frozen, gender, bad grammar and cockney accents. I'm hoping once she starts real school the latter two will go away. But I suppose the rest will get worse over time.

The other affect of nursery was having to change her bedtime. Before she was in bed by 2130, but when she dropped her nap plus being at nursery at 8, meant moving bedtime back to 1930. Rather more traumatic since it meant dinner at 1730 or so. It was really hard at first to get dinner so early. It'd mean stopping work at the most productive time and figuring out what to make that she would eat. Which was always changing. Eventually we just had to give up eating together altogether and we'd just do child dinner and parent dinner 3 hours later. At least it meant us adults be able to eat food we liked again. And now the girl could eat fish fingers and sweetcorn.

A couple of weeks before she turned 3 she suddenly became insolent. It was a surprising personality shift where suddenly she'd be argumentative and refuse to listen or do things. Before that everything seemed so exciting to her. I suppose at 3 she realised what she didn't like and had the language to say so. She must have started to notice there were boundaries and that she could push them.

This was the part that drove me the most mad. This all happened before she started nursery so I can't blame this on other kids. I don't know why it started but I hope it ends with 4. Or at least changes to something more manageable. Otherwise I might end up with blog posts all a variation of Today we argued about something she'd never explain what. She'd just say Stop doing the thing I don't want you to do.

Three was also the year she stated asking for a brother and a sister. It's hard to explain to her that were perfectly happy as a trio. And impossible to say out loud that her behaviour is ensuring she'll be an only child. So instead she'll just pretend she's got invisible siblings around her when we go out and about.

The best parts of 3 were all the conversations. She's now eloquent enough to express what she's thinking and has come up with some really witty things. Pretend play was more exciting. We'd pretend to be at cafe (she even picked up the bill once). Or pretend we were fairies with magic wands transmuting things into other things. Or we'd build a Lego spaceship and take her toy animals into outer space and back. She's reconciled fantasy and science fiction in her head and is happy saying fairies are from fairy planet and aliens are from Jupiter.

Even playing Frozen was fun at first... until she literally didn't stop for 8 months. Now she just occasionally plays Rapunzel, but often conflates it with Star Wars. Well sometimes spar with inflatable Light Sabres and she'll say I cut off your head. But it's ok. I've replaced it with Rapunzel's

On that note we get to play Star Wars a lot. My parents gave her some of my old toys. It gives us something we both like to do together. She enjoyed it so much she wanted her 4th birthday party to have a space robots theme (she loved the R2-D2 cake)

She's still reserved in some ways but still rather outgoing at the same time. She's happy being on a stage (real or makeshift) and singing at the top of her lungs or telling a story. But she won't ask another child their name to start taking or playing with them. That said she does still find smaller kids on the playground and take them all over the place.

So that was 3. She'll be 4 in 2 days. I'm looking forward to seeing what it's like and how things will all change all over again. And I'll just try to keep up.