Comma Dot Comma

We just got back a few days ago from a visit to the Oregon relatives, where Abigail was doted on night and day and we enjoyed the sunny 70-degree weather by staying outside as much as possible. We lounged on the grass, played in the park, and visited the little creek behind the house. Abigail picked raspberries and blueberries that she refused to eat. Dr. G. taught Abigail that states come in colors: Oregon is green, and Arizona is brown. Nice.

What Abigail was most interested in doing in Oregon was hunting cats, preferably the family cat, though any neighborhood cat would do. Her grandma has an outdoor cat named Gizmo, who comes and goes as he pleases. Thus, the refrain of the visit was, “Where’s Gizmo go?” Of course we didn’t know, so we hit upon a standard answer: “He’s busy doing cat stuff.”
“What’s cat stuff?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Running in the field. Climbing trees. Sleeping. Looking at interesting things. Chasing bugs and eating them.”

When Gizmo did come home, Abigail was usually too shy to interact with him much. Grandma let her help put cat food in the bowl, and she liked to watch him play from a safe distance, but that was about the extent of it. Once she said, “Hi, Gizmo! I’m a little cat too!”

Now that she is home, she still asks occasionally, “Where’s Gizmo go?” Sometimes her Kitty Cat becomes Gizmo for awhile. (We actually FORGOT Kitty Cat in Oregon! Gasp! Abigail took it remarkably well, waiting patiently for her cat to arrive by priority mail and allowing Little Bear to sub in for bedtimes).

But the real joy for her is the imaginative fodder of “cat stuff.” She is now “busy doing cat stuff,” several times a day, crawling around with a ribbon hanging out the back of her pants like a tail, pretending to catch bugs and eat them, among other things. She brought me a bunch of imaginary white bugs with dots on them and asked me to hold them for her.

The other event that made a huge impression was the frightening sound of a tree branch crashing to the forest floor. When we explained what it was she wanted us to a) sing a song about it and b) fix it. At least once a day she still looks at me with concern and says in a breathy voice, “There’s a branch fall on the ground.” No matter how many times I sing to her about how happy the branch is to finally be on the ground, having gotten so tired of being up high, she doesn’t believe me. Oh well.

It’s been a rough couple days over here as each of us in succession has been hit by some kind of 24-hour stomach flu bug. Abigail had it first on Wednesday, and her case was the mildest. Dr. G. got it yesterday and his was the worst, and now I have it today. Thankfully, a good night’s rest restored both of them to health and I’m hoping it will be the same for me. Sickness in her parents is causing Abigail all kinds of heartache.

“Daddy, you sick! I HAVE to HELP you!” she said yesterday, voice quavering. She helped in every way she could think of– blankets, bears, greeting cards, drinks, belts draped artfully across his head. It took serious effort on my part (allowing her to use the ice dispenser to make Daddy an ice water) to redirect her from her stated plan to bring Daddy his favorite cereal. During any downtime in the day she rushed to cuddle with him, and before she went to bed she prayed for him too. This morning when he reported that he felt much better, Abigail announced with relief, “You feel happy now!”

I’ve been able to hide my symptoms a little better so as to avoid undue stress, but this evening I had to pass Abigail off to her father because holding her had become too much. When she protested, I told her my tummy hurt. Her eyes filled with tears and she anxiously patted me: “I help you feel better, Mommy! I have to help you feel better.” She got more upset the more she thought about it, verging on outright sobs, and I had to reassure her that I felt better already. Tah-Dah! She gave me several doses of imaginary medicine just to make sure. It’s almost as if she feels a responsibility to take care of her family when they are unwell, and gets stressed out thinking about the burden, in addition to just worrying about us. But it is quite touching to be comforted and cared for by such a wee one. It does seem to help.

Semi-recent news from Toddler TV Land: Barney is out. Elmo is out. Wonder Pets are way, way out. Dora the Explorer is in. Abigail watches about five episodes a week. And as a result, Abigail has been introduced to a new character: The Evil Villain. This villain is pretty tame– he is a sneaky fox named Swiper who tries to swipe Dora’s stuff. But he is easily vanquished by simply repeating, “Swiper, no swiping!” Once in awhile he will succeed at taking something of Dora’s. He throws it into the bushes nearby and the good guys immediately find it again. In a 24-minute episode, he will get typically get about 40 seconds of screen time, max.

Abigail was immediately enthralled with Swiper. He is a little bit scary and a whole lot fascinating. An imaginary Swiper soon infiltrated most of our daily activities. She likes to announce that Swiper is coming, then take something I really need (keys, hairbrush) and throw it far away, saying “Ha! You’ll never find it now!” Even more often, Abigail likes to become Swiper’s victim, announcing that he is taking her food/diaper/clothes/younameit. We got her a little Swiper action figure to make it easier to play. Possibly a mistake. Rule #1: Swiper is not allowed in Abi’s room, ever. Why? Because she likes to scare herself at night as she is trying to fall asleep, imagining that Swiper is sneaking into her room. So her room is now the No Swiper Safety Zone. If he accidentally comes in (say, if I don’t notice him in her hand), then he gets a stern lecture and a time out in the bottom of a toy bin.

Abigail’s Swiper has evolved into someone much more evil than Dora’s Swiper. He will kidnap you, eat you, come at you relentlessly no matter how many times you send him away. If you thwart him in an attempt to steal a sock, he will just come back and take all your clothing instead. He will find a way into books and stories and steal things from all the characters. She seems to project her darkest fantasies onto him. Tonight’s was that he had stolen the poop out of her diaper and thrown it in the kitchen and on Daddy. “Swiper mess you up,” she said, ominously.

I’m ambivalent about Swiper. On the one hand, her imagination is becoming more vivid, and I will need to be watchful of where her fantasies take her, making sure they don’t overtake her. On the other hand, it seems healthy and useful for her to have a non-destructive outlet for her negative thoughts and feelings. I think what we will have to do next is invest Mommy and Daddy with special anti-Swiper superpowers so that we can scare him away semi-permanently with just a word. We need the Swiper Banishment Prerogative.

Abigail’s love of books has begun to produce some storytelling fruit. She now will sit happily for some time while I tell her mini-story after story about Little Kitty Cat, intervening if she doesn’t like the way it’s going. Over the past two days, though, she has suddenly figured out how to tell her own complex stories. Yesterday she told one about Kitty Cat getting stuck in a tree and Mommy Cat getting it down with a net. Tonight, she expanded on her original tale– when Mommy Cat tried to get Kitty Cat with the net, Kitty Cat fell in the water. So they swam around for awhile. Then they went to the ocean. Then they got their blankets and sheets and went to sleep, except that Kitty Cat was crying in bed. So Tico (a Dora character) and Mommy Cat came and picked her up. They took their blankets and sheets into a boat, where Mommy Cat told Kitty Cat a story and then turned out the light (“Chck!”). Tico got out of the boat. He wanted to sleep in the pool. He had a bed out there where he could float in the pool and look at the moon. He turned out the light (“Chck!”).

She likes to tell her stories in her play area, where there is a red, round table. She paces in circles around the table, going faster and faster as the ideas come to her. She waves her arms in the air; she creases her brow; she sighs and gasps in frustration when she can’t think of the right word, and I help her out so she can pick up speed and swoop around the table again. She gets a little louder as the story goes on. I half expect to see little sparks come shooting off the ends of her hair, she’s thinking so hard.

With that kind of mental energy on display, I was surprised that she managed to fall asleep in naptime today after telling me a doozy of a tale that began with “Little birdies barfing on Daddy’s back” and quickly built into a scatological frenzy in which birdies, mommies, and daddies were all pooping and barfing (“Blah! Blah!”) all over the floor and each other and cleaning it up and doing it again. When I left her in her crib she was waving her foot in the air, inviting an imaginary bird to come and poop on it. She thought the whole scenario was really funny. I did too, though I kept most of my amusement to myself. It all began with my asking her what she wanted to dream about. Just now, at bedtime, she said “Cats floating up in the sky.” Then she remembered the barf thing. At the moment I hear loud fake barfing sounds coming from the bedroom. Oh, what a future we must have.

These developmental explosions that small children experience are something else! Just in the past week Abigail’s independence and maturity have taken a great leap.

Yesterday, Abigail and I went downtown to check out Dr. G’s posh new office. In the lobby of his building, there is a vast conglomeration of comfy chairs. Maybe fifty or sixty chairs, arranged in small groups. Abigail spotted them on her way out; it was a dream come true– she loves chairs of all types. Leaning, climbing, sitting, lying, and standing on chairs can keep her busy for minutes on end. If they are small enough she will also stack them and try to sit on them that way. So Abi raced off to clamber on the chairs. We were on a bit of a deadline and had to go. We called her and she defiantly refused to come. I suggested that we just walk away. We got about two hundred yards feet, all the way to the door, and she still sat in her chair and would not come. I went outside while Dr. G called her again. No dice. He went to fetch her and pointed out that, GASP! Her beloved Mommy was already outside! All the way over there! Let’s go see mommy! “No,” replied Abigail. “Mommy come sit here.” She had to be bodily carried from the building, writhing all the way and shouting, “I want to take down!” That was the first time she has been so into her activity in a strange place that she was willing to stay there completely by herself, with her parents barely visible at the end of a corridor.

This morning, for the first time, she announced that she was a teacher. Well, not exactly– she said that she was Dora (the Explorer) and Dora was the teacher. She led us in a rousing song of Good Morning and had us wiggle our fingers, clap, and do it all again, except, “Be louder!” Then we had to shake the parachute (my robe). These are all activities she has done at her weekly storytime group. Next, we had to repeat words and phrases after her and copy all her actions. Then we all cheered. It was a pretty good session, overall.

She also has begun to like dressing up as specific characters. Today, after reading a book about Grover dressing up like a cowboy, Abi asked for a hat, bandana, vest, and boots. I got her all dressed up and she paraded around for, oh, fifteen seconds until she realized how hot it was in our house and how often the hat fell over her eyes. But for fifteen seconds, we had the most UHdoorable cowboy EVAH in the house.

Doc called today with test results… Abi is still not able to digest dairy. Bye-bye yogurt, bye-bye cheddar, bye-bye ice cream. Bye-bye pizza. Rats! We’ll try again later.

Baby Abigail is vanishing before my eyes. Every day, she seems less babyish and more girlish. I had to get her three new pairs of shoes today because she had suddenly outgrown her old ones. She had strong opinions about which shoes were cute, which was a first, and an extra challenge since half were too expensive and the other half weren’t in her size. Finally we found a pair of sneakers that she liked so much she refused to take them off. I let her wander the aisles with her feet tethered with one of those elastic strings, which she managed surprisingly well. Her dad went to check on her during a Failed Nap the other day and found her standing solemnly in the corner of her crib, holding a curtain aside so she could stare out the window. It is not uncommon for her to take a giant picture book and climb up on a chair to quietly “read” it to herself. She mostly speaks in complete, understandable sentences and she occasionally attempts to negotiate with me on my decisions. For example, when we were getting ready for a visit to California to visit New Baby Cousin Liam, Abi suggested that, rather than getting in the car and driving ourselves, “Liam come here. Liam live OUR house.” If she doesn’t want to do something, she is big on running into her room and slamming the door. At mealtimes she will list several things she would like to eat, and sum it up by saying, “That’s a good meal.” She likes to brush and floss her teeth three times a day. She practices standing on her head by putting her head on the ground and walking her feet up the wall.

Her emotional expression is still reassuringly in babyland, though. Negative emotions often result in wailing and writhing; happy ones in bouncing, wiggling, and shaking her arms. Abigail dissolved in tears this morning, almost rolling off the bed where she had climbed up to wake her father, because Daddy reached out and held my hand instead of hers. She wanted him to hold her finger like a baby and it was all just too much! “Stop it daddy, stop it! No mommy finger!” I hope I successfully hid my laughter on that one. I’ve still got two months before she turns two, so I can think of her as a one-year-old a bit longer.

Recipe dictated/demonstrated to me during an outdoor playtime

Soup Water

1. Have the water
2. Put in the grass
3. Put in the butter
4. Put in the chocolate
5. Stir it all up
6. Mix it all up
7. Eat it now! num num!
8. High Five.

I always find it interesting to see how Abigail will interact with other children. This weekend, we spent the night at the house of a friend who has two girls, a three-year-old and a 15-month-old. I remember the exasperation I used to feel as a child when I was expected to get along with some random other kids just because my parents were friends with their parents, and I sensed a little bit of that in Abigail over the course of the visit. Mostly she just ignored the two girls. If the baby happened to wander into her personal space, though, she got grouchy. She would rush up to me and complain, “Somebody over there!”

“Yes,” I’d reply, “That’s sweet baby Gillian. She wants to see what you are doing!” I had to intervene when Abigail went back to the baby, scowling, and said, “Go away,” and tried to physically scoot her down the couch and far away. No pushing cute little baby girls, Abi!

She liked the older girl better. In fact, it only took her a few hours to approach A.C. with her arms outstretched for a hug. AC was dubious but decided to accept the hug. It was one of the more comical embraces I’ve seen lately. As they clutched each other awkwardly, they lost their balance and began to stagger across the floor until they washed up against a chair and tumbled to the floor in a mass of arms and legs, confused but unharmed. They didn’t try any more hugs after that.

At lunch, the two girls were sitting side by side and AC noticed Abigail’s diaper peeking out from the top of her jeans. “I wear underwear,” she announced importantly. “I’m a big girl. Diapers are for BABIES!” I complimented AC on her potty going skills and it got Abigail’s dander up. “I’m a big girl, TOO!” she declared. “Yes, I said, you are. But not as big as AC yet. You still use diapers. After you get potty trained you will wear underwear too.” She thought about that for awhile, and when we were alone washing our hands later, Abi told me, “I have a potty training at home!” I think if she could be around a slightly older girl every day, she’d be potty trained in no time. That competitive spirit would motivate her to get it done lickety-split.

What is making me laugh the most lately, other than Abigail’s non sequiturs, is her singing. I’ve been wanting to write about it for awhile but have struggled to come up with a) an accurate description or b) a recording, since her ditties are spontaneous and short. Suffice to say that to call it “singing” is pretty generous. Sometimes the best clues that I’m hearing a song are her prancing, dancing feet. She also elongates certain syllables and gets quite loud. But the note she tends to belt out is most like what you’d hear if a doctor put a tongue depressor in the mouth of a sore throat patient and asked her to say ah. It’s more of a groan than a note, and usually in a pretty deep register. Take, for example, her new favorite post-bath song: Having a Fun Day. Sometimes she sings “having a FUUUHHHHN day!” and sometimes “having a fun DAAAAAAAAAYYYY.” She likes to mix it up.

About half of her songs are learned; the others are made up on the spot. If she passes by the piano and creative mood is upon her, she’ll bang on the keys a bit and make something up, such as “piggies dancing, baby pigs, baby pigs dancing!” The other day she was feeling morose about her dad leaving for work, so she brought me over to the piano to hear her composition “Daddy Song,” probably her longest work in any genre to date. The lyrics:

Daddy, daddy, daddy.
Daddy daddy.
Daddy GOOOOONNNNNNEEEE.
Sad.
Jesus, Jesus, Jesus COMMME
Blue Jesus, Red Jesus.
Daddy, DAAAAAADddy.

For unknown reasons Jesus is popping up everywhere in Abigail’s communications these days. But hey, he’s nice to have around. As are those heartfelt toddler groans.