Yet a Stranger in the World

Shame on me for combining these into one post, I know.  After two… taxing weeks home from vacation, we had a great weekend with Linnaea.  Mater was at wits end, dealing with Linnaea’s testing and general three-year old-ness, as well as a sudden reluctance – nay, denial – to potty on the, well… potty.  We had already played the nice game, and the bribery game, and the underpants game, and the no pants game…  The thing was, she was playing her own game, and she wasn’t sharing the rulebook.

But she started ballet (Creative Dance I) Saturday, and was told that in order to advance, and be a beautiful ballerina, she would need to potty in the potty every time.   Oh, and there was much excitement about the dance class, the whole week preceding class.  But a few blatant “accidents” during naptime to let us know who was in “control”.  Things changed Saturday after we returned from class.

First, she loves her class.  That’s all she talked about the rest of the weekend.  I think she will really look forward to class every week.  She has a great teacher, and, because of her maturity and… ability to be separated from her parents, she will probably get bumped into Creative Dance II after a couple more classes.  But, she has to be potty trained for that.

This weekend she refused to sit on the potty seat on the toilet, taking it off, and instead sitting on the toilet proper.  She kept her underwear clean and dry all weekend.  She woke up in the mornings with dry training pants too.  But she’s done that before.  No, the hurdle has been the poop.

But during nap time Saturday, we harkened to cries of excited jubilation that she had pooped, pooped in her potty!  Mater had moved Linnaea’s potty chair into her room during the week as a safety measure during diaperless naps.  A safety measure that was thumbed by a cute but petulant nose on more than one occasion.  But not so this time!  Linnaea had done the deed!  And again yesterday!!

I haven’t heard how today is going, now that it’s no longer the weekend.  It’s possible that she will punish us for my absence (she doesn’t like me going to work now) and flush the gains from the weekend.  But maybe not, because she is a beautiful ballerina!  And a super duper pooper!!

Three-year-olds can be tough.

Every so often, when the news is on, Linnaea will enter the room and announce (with great seriousness) “Johmoccain,” and exit.  Shortly thereafter she will enter again with another announcement: “Rock a mama.”

It cracks me up every time.

I’ll let mater expound on the subject when she has time, but I wanted to make sure it was properly noted in the annals of history that Linnaea can now read.

I came into the living room while feeding the animals to see Linnaea standing by mater, who was sitting on the couch, doing her happy-dance.  When excited, usually expectant – for a present or, say, chocolate – Linnaea wiggles her bottom side to side in an incredibly cute happy-dance.  So I knew something was up.    Mater calls me over and tells me the news.  Holding up a page in one of the Bob Books, mater covered up all but the first word of the two-word sentence showcased thereon.  And letter by letter, Linnaea sounded it out, and then assembled the phonetics into a word.  Sam.  Then on to the next.  Sat.  Then the whole sentence.  Sam sat.  We’ve been working with sounding words out for a bit now, but last night it clicked.  And she can read.  I guess it won’t be long now before she’s correcting me when I read her stories at bedtime.  (I sometimes abridge them to help them fit the time slot, or edit content.)

I think one of the things that has helped her is a present she received for her birthday.  The Winnie-the-Pooh laptop (Linnaea loves to check her email) uses cards that are inserted into the “monitor” that  depict a scene with Pooh and his friends.  Several objects in the scene are labeled.  Pooh then asks the child different questions about the picture: what color is something, who is to the left of someone else, how many other things are there, etc.  But he also asks questions about spelling: what is the first letter of the word, or how do you spell the word?  At first I figured the spelling questions would just be something that she would skip for now, hoping that they didn’t frustrate her.  But not too long ago, I realized she was answering them, and doing so correctly.  So she had figured out that the words next to the objects were the words for those objects.  If you know that, answering what the first letter is is no problem.  Spelling them is only difficult because it usually takes her longer to find all of the letters than Pooh allows her to respond – but she gets it.

So, to recap, Trip has teeth and will probably be crawling in a matter of days, and Linnaea, when she isn’t trying to swallow barrettes or suffocate herself trying to hide from thunderstorms that may or may not exist, can read.   =)