Talking Through Toddlers

The following exchanges and others like them have happened recently because Katrina thinks Alina can understand everything she's saying.

Katrina: Do you want Daddy to change your diaper?
Alina: Yah
Me: Do you want mommy to shut up?
Alina: Yah

-and-

Katrina: Do you want PePe to hold the bunny while you pet it?
Alina: Yah
Me: Do you want to saw my legs off and eat them for dinner?
Alina: Yah

Ah Tee Cees

She's fairly consistent with her interpretation of the alphabet and 1 thru 10. Though ABC and 123 sound very similar in Alina language. When we do the alphabet together, she bops up and down to the rhythm and eagerly waits for the letters she knows so she can yell them out. Mostly, she favors anything that rhymes with C, but she says "Osh" for the letter H. It's a lot of fun to see which new letters she's testing out vocally. The J was solid last night. We should have a scoreboard.

We bought those square foam tiles that have the letters and numbers on them. You know, the ones that fit together like puzzle pieces? They're in our kitchen now. Mostly, Alina just likes taking it apart. So we removed the borders and the little pieces that go in the holes like in B, P, O, etc. The letters themselves can be removed from the square as well. So, it was getting ridiculous, putting that back together every day. The stripped down version is easier to deal with. Well, the whole thing seemed like a good idea at the time. I don't know why we thought she'd do anything other than try to dismantle it at 17 months. But I started holding letters up and asking her to point to ones I call out. And if she plucks a letter out of the its foam square and carries it around, I try to teach her what it is. I'm hoping to balance out the fact that she probably watches the fucking Doodlebops at daycare. When Katrina was reading the blog entry about them below, Alina walked up and pointed to them with horrifying recognition. I was horrified, not her.

Disease of the Month

Ah daycares. If they had commercials, I think they'd be something like:

Great socialization for your child
More than you care to pay
Teletubbies Teletubbies Teletubbies
More illness than you can shake a stick at

Last month was Croup. Now we're looking at Rotavirus, which is all about vomiting and watery poo. Sweet! Though it seems she had it mildly, considering what I've read about it. Basically your kid refuses to eat or drink, which is bad when they're exploding from both ends. So you have to force fluids on them or they like, can't do math or die or something. You know, your garden variety baby plague. I remember her first fever, almost a year ago today. She was 5 months old and it was a nail-biting 101. Heh, Amateurs. The only positive I can pull from this is her immune system is getting some extra fortification. By the age 12, she'll be able to drink from the Ganges River using a rat's asshole as a straw.