Thursday, August 21, 2008

Bathtub crayons- A gift from the heavens above



Seriously, these things are MAGIC!



We bought them a few weeks ago for Rebecca since she loves to color and bath time had been a fight for a few days. They're a Godsend!

I finally have a way to wash her hair without her screaming. I make Brian draw elaborate portraits on the top of our bath wall while I pour water VERY quickly through her hair. Yesterday, I even got to condition it for the first time in about 4 months. Yay!

Considering we have a consistent ebb and flow of "I love the bath! I hate the bath" I'm hoping that these will make the I Love the Baths much more common. If not, I'm moving to bath markers!

Quick! What's the number for Mensa?!

Rebecca's such a little smarty pants. I have to brag on behalf of my child for a little while. Because, hey, it's my blog. I get to do that sort of thing here!

First, about 2 weeks ago she demonstrated her ability to label colors. She brought me one of her new bathtub crayons (more about those in another post) and said "Mama! Pink crayon!" and it was. I was beaming with pride. Until, of course, Brian pointed out that perhaps it was a coincidence.

The next morning I was pouring her some milk and selected a straw for her in her cup (as requested, she's so demanding sometimes! LOL). She reached in, picked it up and said "Mama, purple straw!" Or I suppose more like "Muh-muh, puh-buh stwaw". She's brilliant.

Then a couple of days ago we were reading one of her books (Sandra Boynton's Hippos Go Berserk- great book. V. cute) and I was reading "ONE hippo all alone. Calls TWO hippos on the phone" Rebecca kept repeating the numbers as I read them so I set the book aside and just counted the hippos with her. She'd repeat One, Two, Three... then loose interest.

The next morning I was putting her shoes on. These shoes are so cool, they're hot pink with little green turtles all over them (Tuuur-tles) and we were counting the turtles. We got to 6 and she'd ask me to start again. About a half an hour later in the car I hear her in the back seat singing to herself. It went like this.
"La la. One. La la. Six. Six one. Two. Three Six. One. Three. Threeee. La la."

Apparently the number 6 stood out to her?

Now she's up to being able to count One..... Two.....Three.... if prompted. But she thinks that at 3 you're required to jump in the air, jump off a chair, do some sort of silly move. I dig the way she thinks.

Our daycare provider Chris (another truly brilliant woman) has a saying which I paraphrase as thus "Children are brilliant. It's the adults that are too stupid to figure out how brilliant".

Case in point: This evening Rebecca was finishing up her dinner when we found a bunny sitting by our back deck. She LOVES bunnies. Absolutely adores them. So I got her out of the high chair to go see the bunny. As it hopped away we went inside saying "Goodbye bunny".
We reach the table and she says "All done! All done! All done!" so I assume this meant that she was.... all done?

I set her down and started to clean off her sticky fingers when she got very upset "No! No Mama!" After several tries to figure out what it was she wanted, I finally said "Becca, what do you need?"
She looked me square in the eye and said "More cheese, please!" with a huffy look like "Geeze, woman, what have I been saying all along?"

It turns out "All done" was actually "All gone". As in, the bunny is gone, now woman, where's my cheese? See? I'm just too stupid to figure it out :)

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Going to the fair

We have an annoying commercial that plays in the last week of July and 1st week of August around here with a farmer-style man singing "Going to the fair! Going to the fair! Going to the Northwest Michigan fair!" in an annoying fake twang. Which is dumb, since we live in MICHIGAN. We have no twang.

But, I digress already- We took Rebecca to said fair!
We tried to go on Saturday evening, got all the way into the fairgrounds to park before we realized "Hey. The fair isn't here yet". It didn't open (partially) until Sunday. Whoops!

Take two- after a fun/tiring boat trip Sunday morning with on my brother-in-law's boat (MIKE! as Becca says) we took Rebecca to the fair. Again. This time they were even open!

The only things that were really open were the food stands and the animal portion (also known as the entire reason we went to the fair: animals for Becca. Carnie food for me. Don't judge)

She LOVED it! We took her through the cow stalls no less than 3 times. Each time we'd hit up a new animal she'd make the appropriate animal noise.

Strangely enough, her favorite of all the animals was the rabbits. She kept yelping "HOP! HOP!" at them as we walked past the cages.
She was so excited when we finally found a rabbit that actually would hop in 85 degree heat!

After we sweltered in the animal stink for a while we hit up the french fries stand (Mmm Gibby's fries. Best. Food. Ever.) then headed for home.

We're considering taking her back again sometime this week before the fair closes down for the year and hopefully this time we'll remember where our camera is so that we can take photos.