Matt also forgot to say that Carmen can also sign good/thank you (but sometimes she blows a kiss as an equivalent sign), cracker, pig, ball, dog, diaper, cat (and she says, "ta!"), water (looks like eat, sometimes), milk, and she even thinks she can sign pear. Except that she doesn't sign anything that looks like pear, she signs bear. Pear, bear. Sounds close. I guess it means she's listening (and we had better behave ourselves). Rooster, horse, and cow all look very alike, too, involving some wiggling about the ears. When she signs horse, though, she tends to also say "hess," which I guess to a Carmen sounds much like "horse." Although one time she did call a picture of a rooster "horse." (Of course, a red horse at the George Ranch is named Rooster . . . no wonder she's confused.) She's never made click sounds for the rooster picture, though (with her tongue, you know, like, click-click, giddyup.)
Tom Cruise bought an ultrasound machine to see his baby grow; I would pay a pretty penny to see my babies think.
A couple of weeks ago we received a hard rain the morning, with thunder. The babies stopped and watched me every time they heard the thunder rumble. "Rain," I said, signing rain. This morning it rained--and Carmen let us know she noticed. Rain, she signed, rain. How did she remember something that I had already almost forgotten?
She also asks for books. A lot. At any time. I brought out a frog puppet and said, "I'm the Wide-Mouthed frog!" Book, she signed back, over and over again until I put the puppet away (saying "A lot of good you are!") and read The Wide-Mouthed Frog. Three times. I don't want to tell you how often she has had me read the farm animals book while she sits on her potty. It has been too many. She sits and sits, without any consideration for how long she has been sitting there, doing nothing except making me stand around and read the book. I wonder what benefit she is extracting out of the process, exactly. I know she has the book memorized, because before I'm on to the next page she's already signing the animal that will appear there. Of course, if I set her down with the book on the zafu, she just gnaws on the pages. So much for that.
Another hallmark of the Carmen baby brain is that she likes to take shortcuts. David has a toy that is basically a box with a slot, and little wooden discs slip inside the slot. When David inserts the disk, the disc falls into the box with a clank. The box is open on one end, so David can fish out the disc to insert it through the top again. Carmen can't figure out how to insert the disc into the slot, so she just places it straight into the box via the open side. And then claps.
Carmen, Carmen, Carmen. What has David been doing? He has been very busy. It is hard work to empty my drawers, throw handfulls of rubber mulch here and there on the porch, practice stepping up and down the back stoop, throw toys over and through the baby gates installed throughout the house, crawl under tables and get stuck and unable to get out, spit water like a fountain, stack blocks (seven tall!), spin tops, chew on the windowsill while staring out the window (don't worry, we put a rubber strip there so he wouldn't eat any paint), jump on various pillows, take hearty tastes of his sister and I (ow! teeth!), grab my face with two tomato-saucey hands while he gives me a kiss, share his meals with me (even after he's chewed on it a bit), eat cookies while sister sleeps, dance wildly when he sees the Happy Feet trailer, clap and bob when he hears his favorite songs, even when he's sitting in the carseat, tackle his big Raggedy Ann dolls, bang on the storm door, and point at various things while babbling something that sounds very important. He can consistently sign wash hands, more, ball, fish, hat, and laughs and waves his hands around for all the rest.
Yeah. He's a little busy.
Okay, the story of Steve. I don't know the story, exactly, because I did not grow up hearing it (apparently, again and again and again). But the gist of the story is that one day Steve was jumping on the bed, and fell down and hit his head and there was blood EVERYWHERE and he had to get stitches. Matt's dad tells it, maybe he will be nice enough to write out it as a comment to the blog so I am sure to get it right.
That way I will be ready to say it again and again, because, you see, C&D have figured out how to climb onto the bed and couch. David learned first, and Carmen has just recently figured out how to get up there, too. They jump, and jump, and jump, and then when they are finished jumping they fling themselves onto the bed, falling every which way. Of course, jumping on the bed is no good, and I am certain that one day they are going to forget that the bed or couch has finite borders, and they are going to painfully fling themselves right off of it.
Of course, C&D aren't quite ready to care about or make sense of the story of Steve, so for now Matt and I will have to practice our best broken-record renditions of "Couch not for jumping. Couch is for sitting. Please sit down on the couch." or, "Bed not for jumping. Bed for sleeping (yeah, right, champion sleeper Carmen says). Lie down on the bed." But we will have the story of Steve ready.
The allure of the couch and the bed is that they are squishy and bouncy and it doesn't hurt when you fall like it does on the floor. The slide and rubber mulch outside has certainly helped with C&D's bouncy inclinations, but they will probably be attending a gymnastics class as soon to help get those ants out of their pants. The class mostly involves a lot of bouncing on various thicknesses of foam, which should be exactly what the babies are wanting to do these days. Until then, we'll keep those parental record players going.
I'm also looking for dance and music classes to start in the next several months. The babes love to move, and Carmen already seems to have a very good sense of rhythm (she can clap in time to Ojos Asi, her currently-favorite song, perfectly . . . no, she hasn't seen the video . . . and won't).
I don't just want a funny little toddler movement class, though, where we sing Itsy Bitsy Spider or bang tambourines in turn. I'm thinking of a ballet folklorico class. Why simply bob and wiggle to the Hokey Pokey when you can twirl, stomp, and forego your "inside voice" for a hearty grito? I haven't found a toddler folklorico class, however, despite living in such a big, busy city. I might have to find an instructor and start one. I think it would be a worthy project, and much more fun than any other movement class I could find.
A Suzuki music class will start in the fall. Goody.
The computer is better today. It actually wasn't sick, after all. The wireless mouse's signal-thing had drifted to far away, and it made the computer act like all of its 1GB of RAM had suddenly melted. But now, it's okay. Good thing. I have some important writing to do in the next couple of months; this is no time for computer problems. Several pictures were temporarily lost (some were on my mom's CF card, others just need to be re-downloaded) in our recent hard drive disasters, so pictures will come slowly, but surely. The babes are still here, though, never fear, and are doing just fine.
Coming up in the next edition of the Pitter Patter Periodical:
- a post I never finished because the 'puter died and took my pictures with it.
- David and the slide
- retiring the cribs -- why not?
- Elizabeth Pantley says hello
1 comment:
Here's the story of Steve: "One day Steve was jumping on his parents' bed. He fell and hit his head on the nightstand and lots of blood came out. He had to go to the hospital and have stitches. So, don't jump on the bed, or the same thing might happen to you." This was a true story. Steve was a little boy that lived down the street from us. He really did have to go to the hospital. I think this story started with Matt because Steve and his family actually moved before Paul & Scott were born. The story remained in the Reisdorf family, however, and must have had some kind of impact because everyone remembers it. I'm sure it was repeated ad nauseum! It must have been effective because no one ever had to go to the hospital for jumping on the bed.
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