She’s got it all figured out

How is it that Rose has gone from single words to running linguistic rings around us?

This evening when I got home from work Rose met me at the door. She said, “Hello Mummy! That is a beautiful skirt.”

Also this evening I found a set of keys in the back door. This is strange only because they were the fake set of keys that grandad had made her for her first birthday. She’s been working her way around all of the locks in the house, trying each key. Chris told me that after she got a chair over to reach the back door lock. Then she asked for tape. He gave her some, and she said, “Thank you Daddy. That so kind of you.”

After dinner Rose and I were sitting in the living room eating iceblocks. They were the home-made kind with frozen juice and water. She leaned over and looked at mine. “Can I have some of yours?” she asked. I said, “No! You have your own. This is mine.”

Then she said, “What about teamwork?”

Socratic questioning

When Rose wants to tell you something she prefers to do it in the context of a question and answer. She’s developed this complicated way of asking you a question that she actually wants you to ask her. It goes something like this:

Rose: Is it yummy?

Me: Is it yummy?

Rose: Yes!

She also uses it to indicate what she wants to do. Such as:

Rose, obviously bored: What park do you want to go to Rosie?

[Pause]

Rose: ROSE! What park do you want to go to!

Me, sighing: Rose, what park do you want to go to?

Rose, grabbing her things: Camperdown Park!

It’s kinda cute. Very smart. And a little odd.

And speaking of cute, smart and odd, I got her all dressed up for her day care photo today. Here she is wearing the party dress I made her. Damn it if you don’t just want to reach out and grab her little cheeks.

Tess’s birthday party

The last thing I feel like doing is uploading pictures from Tess’s party right now. Not that it wasn’t a fun party, or a really happy day for our little family, or a nice time with our friends, because it was all of those things. It’s just that my Nana is not well right now and I’m feeling very sad about it. However, I know that she’d also love to see some pictures, so I’m really doing this for her.

Tess blowing out the candle on her cupcake!

 

Rose had a ball at the party. Every time I looked for her she was dancing in the middle of the room. Or opening one of Tess's presents.

 

Party food! I also made cupcakes for the birthday cake.

 

How many family portraits of us are there? Hardly any. Still couldn't get the kids to look at the camera, though!

 

Cleaning up after Tess's party was like cleaning up after a keg party. Toddler's can party like teenagers!

 

New photos

I just uploaded some new photos to our online album. Here’s a few of my favourites:

Rose in her bumblebee costume for Halloween (I made the tutu). How funny that her friend Percy came dressed as the same thing!

We visited our friends Paul and Petra the other week in their new house. Rose found her way in to Percy's bed. You can see from their expressions what fun they were having!

Isn't she the most adorable baby EVER?

Beau, Julia and I working our way through an incredible spread in the Megalong Valley tea rooms

 

Making the car better

We just got back from a delicious meal of fish and chips down at Glebe Point, watching the boats go by and the sun set over the Anzac Bridge. On the way back Chris and I fell into a trans-fat related stupor but both revived when we both heard Rose say, “I make the car better!” We turned around at exactly the same time and saw Rose pulling a huge chunk out of the car. She appeared to be pulling some large plastic moulding holding the door in the door frame. Chris said firmly, “Rose, NO! Don’t pull bits off the car. We need the car to go places.” (What is it about Toddlers that make you strangely specific in the way you talk about things.)

Further on down the road we heard Rose saying to herself, “I put it away for later.”

What chocolate crackles will and won’t make up for

Little Rose doesn’t want it to be Tess’s birthday. Well, she does and she doesn’t. She wants the chocolate crackles I’ve been promising. And the cupcakes, and the chips, and the balloons. But she doesn’t like the small mound of gifts that we’ve been describing as “Tess’s presents”. She’s finding it hard to understand that it was Mama’s birthday a few weeks ago, and now it’s Tess’s and when the heck is hers? Last night she even went as far as saying that she was turning one soon, when she knows full well that she’s two.

Truth be told she’s been going through a lot. She moved up to the giraffe room last week (the mostly 2-3 year old room). There are some things she loves about the new room, such as being able to help herself to water from a water cooler (my thoughts: are they insane?), and having free access to her school bag all day so that she can get her beloved rabbit Patch out whenever she wants it. But there are also some new things about the giraffe room to adjust to, such as the fact that they don’t have a dedicated sleeping room, they just pull the toddler beds out when it’s nap time. And she no longer has Ryoko her favorite carer with her. Also, one big change is that they’re toilet training her. After months of toilet refusal at home when Chris picked her up from day care last week she was actually sitting on the toilet peeing by herself. Woah. All this change has made her pretty temperamental and clingy at home. It probably hasn’t helped that we’ve had a lot of visitors lately. While we’ve had a lot of fun it must seem somewhat like a revolving door to her.

And of course there’s another big change next week: I go back to work. Yikes!