dynamic elf

I've been delaying writing the Natalie language update for long enough that she's gone through several distinct stages while I've been putting it off.

( a few back notes mostly for myself about stuff she did )

A month or two ago, she started experimenting with shortening words to see what we'd understand. This led to a lot of utterances like "MAH KERREH! MAH KERREH! That means 'mommy I want you to carry me'. MAH KERREH!" Anyway, she does that a lot, still -- she'll say something inscrutable and short, and I'll have to ask her what it means, and she'll patiently explain it to me and then repeat the short form. It's pretty playful -- I mean, it has to be. I've gotten pretty comfortable with the world where I understand everything she says without even trying, so when she tries to make it harder for me I don't have to work hard to play dumb. Really, if any of my peers said the weird truncated things she says, I would also be confused. It usually goes like this:

N: I wah my shor.
Me: ...what?
N: I want my shorts. I wah my shor.
Me: Um, okay, here are your shorts.

Often, when I pick her up at the end of the day, I will get a cute little anecdote from one of the teachers that amounts to "Natalie said something situationally and socially appropriate". Friday's, for example, was this: "Natalie was swinging a toy around and accidentally bonked someone, so she stopped swinging it and said, 'Oh, I'm sorry! Oh, did I hit you? I'm really sorry!'" So, I mean, I laugh, because it's cute, but why is it cute that she knew what to say? It's the same thing when I say "ouch, that really hurt!" when I stub my toe or whatever and she gets that superconcerned face and says, soothingly, "I know, mommy, I know. I know. It'll be okay."

There's a big balancing act in here -- right now, one of my biggest parenting challenges is figuring out how to expect the right amount from her. She can sound older than she is, so I have to remember that she can't really, say, follow a logical chain of reasoning several steps down the line before speaking. Her attention span is definitely that of a 2-year-old. She likes running around and banging stuff and shrieking and talking about poop. But on the other hand, as dilletante was saying to me last night, we like expecting a lot of her, because she so often lives up to our expectations, and if we didn't give her room to do that, then she wouldn't have the chance.

Now, the reason I started posting in the first place, which at this point might be a little anticlimactic! A thing that we've actually been trying to get her to do is be more explicit in her descriptions of stuff, because this conversation gets old after try #100:

N: What's that?
Me: What?
N: That! What's that?
Me: Which thing do you want to know about?
N: THAT thing!

And, slowly, she has been getting it. It's wonderful to watch her refine her descriptions. Now, when you ask 'which thing', she will usually say something like 'the white thing on the counter over there'. She gets ( this expression ) on her face, which looks for all the world like how I feel when I'm trying to express something complicated in a language I don't speak very well. And that must be EXACTLY WHAT SHE IS FEELING! Which is awesome.

But the best thing of all to hear is when she searches and searches and can't come up with a circumlocution or anything and has to just use the best-fit word available to her at the time. Two things she said to me this weekend while I was carrying her:

"Your face isn't round, mommy. It's more ... .... SHAPED."

and

"It feels like rain. The sky is grey and the air is... ... the air is heavy."

It didn't rain that night, but it DID feel like rain, and if I could have I would have opened up the heavens myself to pour rain down on us right that instant.

So, ceelove and I took the small girls to Montreal last weekend and I brought back some kids' books. This week's timeline:

Sunday: N requests "da Caillou book" all time time. She asks for cornichons, but seems to just think of it as an English word, which maybe it is.

Monday: N spontaneously notes that "bah NWEE" (bonne nuit) means good night.

Tuesday: She asks what every single thing in every French book is called, and can repeat several of them.

Wednesday: She wakes up suddenly able to repeat French words in a French accent rather than the American accent of the previous few days. (Seriously, you should hear her say maman or something.)

Friday: She corrects me, politely, as I read a French book. We were reading a Petit Ours Brun book (Little Brown Bear), and the first time I said ours, she said, "ourson" (teddy bear). Now, she hadn't encountered a BEAR bear before in her books, just teddy bears, so her correction was completely understandable; I explained to her that ourson just meant stuffed animal bear, and ours referred to bears, like we say "teddy bear" and "bear". (She accepted this idea.)

Monday 2/18: I ask her, in French, what chickens say, because she was just saying "cot cot cot cot!" (which is the answer, for those playing along). In English, she replies, "and they EAT EGGS", because this is her favorite misconception about chickens that she likes to tell me about because she knows it gets my goat.

Also, upon learning that chickens say cot cot cot cot cot, both dilletante and veek independently arrived at the conclusion that they must say cot cot cot cot CODEC!, which indicates pretty strongly that I hang out with the right people.

Oh, ALSO also, they both believe that "petit à petit, il s'habitue à l'obscurité" ("and little by little, he gets used to the darkness") is a creepy line to put in a kids' book, but I think the clear winner so far is still "so the vet pulled on his LONGEST latex glove...".

A neat article on parents who encourage their kids to learn lots, early. Let's hear it for just hanging the fuck out.

( a few more N tidbits from the last few days )

The blender responds to human communication.
The person speaks the language of the blender.

Be sure to watch the movie. Really.

link courtesy of fennel

( language and pretending )

Oh! And apparently she hates cilantro! It makes her make a really sad face and then give sad chokey noises. This from a girl who voluntarily licks soap.

N seems to have invented a sign for "heavy" -- if, after turning something over in her hands, she decides it's heavy, she will look you in the eye, hoist it a bit, and grunt (rather conversationally!) as if straining over a reeeeally heavy thing. She's clearly spent a lot of time with us while we lift weights.

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Signs you've been reading a lot of Sandra Boynton:

"What does the sheep say?"
"Sheep!"
"It *is* a sheep, you're right! Do you know what the sheep says?"
"BAAAAAAAA."
"Yeah! How about the cow, what does the cow say?"
"MOOOOOO!"
"Yeah!! And what does the pig say?"
"LA LA LA LA LA!"

So, tonight, miz N rules-lawyered me for the first time. The girls were playing at the base of the stairs while starphire and I hung out and watched. S was jumping up and down in a bouncy chair, and N was running about doing, y'know, whatever it is she does, when she got it in her head to go upstairs.

Me: No, Natalie, we're not going upstairs right now. We're going to stay down here and play.
N: *thinks about this*
Me: Come down off the stairs, please.
N: *sits down on the first stair*
Me: Thank you! That's fine, you can sit on the first stair.
N: *stands up on the first stair*
Me: The first stair is okay, but we're staying down here, so no more stairs.
N: *teasingly starts up the stairs*
Me: No, stay down here. No more stairs. Stay on this stair, the first stair. The one with the crab on it. (*puts a toy crab on it*)
N: *thinks*...
N: *moves crab up a stair, climbs up, moves crab up another stair*...

Now, I'm sure everyone could see that coming but me. I have no idea why I decided that I should say "the one with the crab on it" and not "the one I'm sitting on" or, really, anything unaffectable by small girls, but there you have it. She found the loophole in my shoddy decree in less than five seconds.

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In other news, we have a long bike ride planned for tomorrow. Rather uncharacteristically, we were totally packed and ready before 11 PM. Like, clothes out, warm socks located, camera charged, bikes and gear in the car (which is full of gas), camelbaks stuffed full of goodies, diaper bag packed for N's day out with dancingwolfgrrl ready. Huh.

dilletante and spike and I actually managed to play ASL Once Upon A Time tonight; it started out rough, since none of us had signed in ages and ages, but I could tell by the end that the dust was clearing out of the old pathways and it was all starting to make more sense. Of course, I can't make up stories to save my life, no matter how much I enjoy telling them, but still, I hope to make this a more regular practice, because (a) it's fun, and (b) Natalie totally needs to learn how to sign that, like, she's poisoned her queen and run off with a thief to a distant land.

So, how many of you are local, know some sign, and might be up for the occasional bout of storytelling?

[Poll #903488]