She Said What?
Allison’s vocabulary continues to grow at an astonishing rate. Now at 19 months, she surprises us with new developments every day:
We often hear her singing the ABC song to herself. Very clearly she will sing, until L (mumble…) and then picking up again at QRS. She sings this to herself, to us, to anyone who will listen. Often she accompanies herself by swinging her two arms back and forth. Part of this I suspect is to get our attention, because we will often stop our conversation to listen to her singing. Other times, she just seems to sing for the joy of it.
She also sings: Itsy Bitsy Spider (with hand motions), Twinkle Twinkle, Rain Rain Go Away, and Rock a Bye Baby. In the evenings, she’ll request songs for bed by putting her hand on my face and saying “Tinkle” or “down rain” or “bye.” If I don’t hear her, she’ll keep patting my cheek. Other times, she’ll say “Allison!” so we’ll sing her name as part of the song. Katherine loves to participate in this routine by sitting her her little rocking chair next to ours and singing along – solo or as part of the chorus.
She astounded me today as I heard her counting in Spanish as she climbed the stairs. According to Patty, Allison can count in Spanish from 1-10. On her way to Toby School, she watched the UPS trucks pull out of the nearby depot, and she started to count them in Spanish! And, I’ve also heard Allison many times counting in Mandarin from 1-10 – and English…She truly is a trilanguage kid.
Thanks to her sister, Allison loves Leapfrog. Occasionally they’ll watch the Letter Factory – which appeals to Allison because of the music. When Katherine is at school, Allison will climb on the sofa, and say hopefully “QRS?” or “ABC?” If I don’t accede to her request, she’ll find the remote and point it at the TV. I also found her once putting the Leapfrog DVD in our DVD player! Has this had any affect? Well, tonight, she sang “The A says Ah, the A says Ah….” I tried to sing along with the “The B says…” and she said “Ah!!” Thankfully we’ve got a while to learn phonetics!
I would say that her vocabulary now exceeds 150 spoken words. She’ll blurt out two words at times, like tonight when she said “Got it!”
Much of this credit should go to my mom and Patty who have been immersing Allison in Chinese and Spanish. I also know that my mom has been drilling Allison with numbers and letters, and she’s been absorbing it!
Sibling Dynamics
I shouldn’t paint too rosy of a picture at home because we certainly have our challenges. One of the big challenges is managing Allison’s belief that everything is MINE! And, Katherine can’t figure out how to work/share with her sister who doesn’t understand sharing. It results in toys going away, items being removed from a very unhappy Allison and generally normal but not fun sibling dynamics. Thankfully we have a few concrete rules which the kids follow:
- No one has to share their lambies. Have I mentioned that Allison adores and sleeps with mama lambey, the gigantic version of Katherine’s stuffed Amela lamb?
- If they can’t share, it goes up. (I believe that Katherine works this rule at times though.)
- Toys with small pieces get played with when Allison isn’t around. Allison unfortunately loves to play with chokable items, like the cherries in Hi Ho Cherrio or puzzle pieces or game pieces…
FINALLY FULL DAY
Katherine is now a full day kid at Eton. This means lunch at school and pick up mid afternoon. This is really convenient given Allison’s mid day nap. Katherine is also really proud and happy to hang with her friends the entire day. She’s even mentioned wanting to be at Clubhouse (daycare after school) so she can be with friends the rest of the afternoon. Her work production is certaining going up now. Her backpack is chock full of stuff from two work cycles – one in the morning and one in the afternoon.
Unbenowst to us, the teachers had started Katherine on simple reading of three letter words. (This is all good since we’ve been playing reading games with her too…) She showed Steve on Saturday a work in which she pulls out three letter words, sounds them out and then puts the item next to the word. For instance, sounding out l-o-g then a picture of a log goes next to the word card. Writing continues to develop as well. She can now write a wobbly Katherine in mixed upper and lower case, which is kind of legible in a preschool kind of way. She also showed Steve during Father/Daughter Day a work in which she took two baskets of items with two items each and added them up to produce four.
Katherine is very proud of her works. Today she burst in the house waving a book at me. “Look Mama at the book I made.” She flipped thru to show me the 5 senses of Christmas which had a jingle bell, candy cane, fluffly beard, etc. I expressed admiration with only a slight caveat “It seems to be Veronica’s book. Do you think she has yours?” “Oh Yes, Mama” We tucked Veronica’s book in her backpack. I hope she comes home with her work on Thursday so she can admire it more over the holidays. ๐
She’s increasingly getting attached to her teachers. For the auction, she insisted that we try and buy her teacher experience – time spent with her teacher learning about horses. Katherine also told me very clearly that her teachers HAD to have Burts Bees for Christmas (we did that last year for her teachers at MCH) and a gift card. So, she came with me to the store and picked out their gifts.
Katherine really is growing up very quickly.
The Trip Trap Chair
I caved this month and told Steve that it was time to buy two of these rather expensive chairs. Allison (aka Danger Girl) had developed a habit of climbing on the kitchen chairs and standing up to eat! Despite us telling her “tushie or knees” we’d find her standing up, waving her food at us. This of course resulting in several tumbles onto the floor.
I was convinced the only way to deal with this was to buy this chair which allows Allison to sit at the table while belted in. She generally refuses to sit in a high chair for more than say 5 minutes…So, tonight Steve came home with two chairs – one to keep Allison seated and the other to ensure peace among siblings.
The kids love the chairs! So, did the purchase have the desired results? Yes, until after dinner. While we cleaned, Danger Girl climbed the chair and sat on the bottom ledge playing with the straps on the top ledge/seat. I explained that it was unsafe, peeled her off the chair at least 3 times with much crying. I guess we’ve solved one problem, standing with eating, and introduced another…
Visiting Santa
We may get one more year of Santa Claus with Katherine, before she figures out what’s up. This year she’s started to ask some hard questions like “how does he open the door to the fireplace?” and “how does he get back up the fireplace?” Not as familiar with the Santa lore, I defer these questions to Steve who explains, “it’s magic.” Ha!
She may have also noticed this past Saturday at the Toby School party that Santa was wearing tennis shoes.
Katherine did express her concern that she needed to visit Santa for two reasons.
1) Santa gives out candy canes. Katherine is obsessed with candy canes.
2) Santa apparently doesn’t know what she wants unless she tells him (or so Steve says).
So, we dragged both kids to Santa at Redmond Town Center last Friday after school to see the big guy. He was very nice. Allison predictably wouldn’t go near him. So, we now have a picture of our entire family with Santa. Katherine explained to Santa that she wanted a watch and a wallet for Christmas. She was stymied when he asked what kind of wallet. It will all work out – princess digital watch and a hello kitty wallet.
Why the princess watch? For my birthday, I asked for two things – a cheap Timex watch and a coupon holder. I explained to Steve my new rule – the cheaper the watch the longer it lasts. This is evidenced by my Ebel, which now has to go back for repairs AGAIN and my Timex running watch which still works after 8 years. Steve dragged the kids to Target and what did Katherine see in the watch department? A cheesy, pink watch with a princess on the band.
The Blog Lag
Everyone has been most kind in not pointing out that I haven’t blogged in ages. The lag can be attributed to the Eton Auction – specifically the silent auction. We had the auction on Sunday the 3rd, and the house is finally settled back down. It was a pretty crazy November, but all is now back to normal just in time for the holidays!