kiya

Me: Is it too late to nap the Katie?
artan_eter: Well, that depends. Do you intend to sleep tonight?
KJ: No.
artan_eter: Then no! It's not!
Me: ... ... ...!

Paying attention to her obsessions pays off. Given that she is prone to fishing the mesh bag of garlic out of the hamper and run about proclaiming, "A garly! A garly!" (or possibly "I got it! I got it!"), saving the garlic-chopping for when she wakes up from her nap so I can say "Could you get me some garlic?" lets her feel helpful and involved.

Her fort (whispercricket discovered something called a 'learning tower' and artan_eter built one), which brings her safely up to the level of seeing the counter, remains completely awesome, especially now that she can climb in and out of it on her own.

As it happens, the dish I was making for dinner involves a lot of whole spices. Whole spices are an awesome thing for toddler assistance. I was grinding some stuff up in the mortar and pestle and said "I need eight of these," and handed her a packet of bay leaves. She carefully extracted one from the bag. "One," I said, and she extracted another, and we counted up to eight in a tidy little heap and then put the bag away.

Similar counting was done with whole cloves and cardamom pods, though that was a lot more numbers (hard to keep her attention), and accomplished by pouring some out on the counter and having her count them into a bowl. Afterwards, the leftovers were restored to the jar with "We have to clean up the mess!" and she gleefully put the caps back on. Whole spices are a plus.

This time making the curry I braved moving the fort over next to the stove so she could watch. I asked her what was in the pot, and got "Ons!", with a little prompting, "Garly!", and finally "Ginge!"

There is a sequence in the procedure that involves frying yoghurt; I measured out the quantity into a bowl, got one of her spoons (Chinese soup spoons - she finds them easier to handle without spilling), and we took turns putting the yoghurt into the korma. At least up until she dribbled a little fluid onto the burner, which made a rather remarkable hissing noise and provoked cackles of glee, but after which she was unwilling to do more than fill the spoon. ("Mama turn!")

She serves as an excellent cheerleader. (Last week's curry had me trying to cut the ends off garlic cloves with some very thick shells, and she studied what I was doing and then earnestly said, "Mama push!") Today, I pulled the chopped chicken out to put in - artan_eter had put it in two bowls. I put one in, and got the declaration "Meat! Mo meat!" and vigorous pointing as if I might forget the other bowl.

She thought the salt water that got added was tea, because it came out of the kettle.

She thinks that food that is being cooked under a lid should be "Ope!" when she wants to look at it. This is unsurprising; she is two.

"Beep go! Beep go!" Toddler reminder systems on timers are useful, also adorable.

Other catering to her obsessions: at the end when the cream gets poured in, she climbed up into her tower and, with a little bit of assistance, poured it into the curry.

She has, however, not considered actually eating any.

KJ: Myow.
Cat: Mew.
KJ: Myow.
Cat: Mew.
KJ: Meah, myeah, myow myow.
Cat: Mrrr.
KJ: Myoww.
Me: What are you and Arthur talking about?
KJ: Meow!

This is relayed from whispercricket.

So there is a drawing program she has on her iPhone called Zenbrush. This has been placed in the KJ Games section of the iPhone.

artan_eter used this to draw a stick figure with long, straight hair. KJ labelled this figure "Ma ma ma!"

whispercricket then added curly hair to the figure.

KJ then identified it as "Tee-tee." Because apparently she is aware that her defining characteristic is "flufflehead".

She then pointed to the blank space next to Tee-tee, and said, "Mama." A new stick figure was drawn - again with straight hair - and declared, with grave satisfaction, "Ma ma ma."

(This fine example of parental artwork can be found here.)

Among the things that KJ loves the most in the world appears to be the moon. When she spots a crescent - especially a nice luminous one - the finger shoots upwards, along with the proclaimation, "Mun. Muuuuuuuuuuuuun!"

We picked up for her one of those little acrylic tubes with sparkles in it, a magic wand like the ones my brother and I had as kids, and she will flip it over and over. "Mun. Mun! Bye-bye, mun!"

So...

... I'm slowly working my way through Calendars of Ancient Egypt. Which has a lot lot lot about lunar calendars in it, which is useful because I finally am getting some of this stuff sorted out in my head.

But mostly I want to occasionally stop and howl, "MUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUN!"

Parenting. It makes a body weird.

We went up to see some fireworks this evening for the Fourth. KJ loved the ones at a distance - she loves lights - and loved waving a flag she was given by a rampaging five-year-old, and danced to the fiddler (so long as he wasn't playing to her, because his attention gave her shyness/stage fright).

However, the fireworks that we were actually there to see were too close and thus too loud, and she spent a while clinging to artan_eter. We got her through a bit by saying "Whee!" at all the flashy bits, and she agreed that they were "Whee!" but the booms were a bit much, so whispercricket took her into the building, where, apparently, they had a conversation that went something like this:

whispercricket: So this is too scary right now. Will you be all right going to see them when you're three?
KJ: Nononononono.
whispercricket: Not when you're three? How about when you're four?
KJ: Four.
whispercricket: Four?
KJ: Four.

So I said something that ended:

Whitney says, "Speaking of the input from inner children."

And I went off and did things, and came back to my computer some time later, and saw this:

%% Your input contained Unicode characters that this server cannot understand; you may have pasted from Word or something similar. Atlantis will attempt to convert it all to be usable, but some characters may be lost in the process.
Whitney says, "Speaking of the input from inner children.,k/pam,??cLa bj t????v / brire ? ?jv...?.jj;yc"

To which I said:

Whitney returns to her computer, looks at her screen, and cracks the everliving fuck up.

Some time later still this conversation happened:

Juniper laughs!!
Lavoisier ?
Juniper says, "At the, "Speaking of the input from..." bit. ([KJ] clearly hit "up" and then typed some fun stuff. :)"
Brooks says, "Oh, that's where the "speaking of the input from" came from. Hah, indeed!"
Whitney says, "It's actually more complicated than hitting 'up' - the actual command is control-P. But otherwise, yes."

Certain small people are officially toddlers.

There is a little playground about a quarter of a mile down the road, hidden in the trees and fences such that we only noticed it was there when we saw a tandem stroller trying to make the cross to get to it.

Today I brought KJ there.

It was ...

She spent a while sitting snuggled in my lap filling my socks with sand, and a more apt metaphor for parenthood I know not. I sang to her, and she jumped and startled every time a truck went by beyond the fence.

After a bit, I put her midway down on one of the plastic slides - there was a sort of twin slide, and I put her on the inner curve - and slid her down. We did that one or two more times, and then she sat at the bottom, dug her toes into the sand, turned, and started to climb.

She clambered up the slide to the first curve, and slid down. And dug her toes in, planted her hands flat on the blue plastic, and kept going. I lay down on the other slide and watched her climb. Every failure made her laugh, gleeful in her experience of unsuccess. She gripped the sides of the slide, pulled herself to her feet, and clambered, a little higher this time, making it partway up the curve before she slid, cackling, down to the bottom again.

Each setback inspired new joy, new experimentation, and each slide to the bottom was a reward.

And there is a lesson.

I stood next to her as she climbed, and as she reached the curve, I rested one hand under her foot, giving her just a little more purchase.

She made it around the curve. I put my other hand under her other foot, and she kept climbing.

We climbed the slide together, like that, her putting forth the effort, the drive, the desire, and me giving her a place to stand.

She reached the top, and sat there, turning back to me, radiant and laughing, triumphant. She had done the work, and I had helped her find her way up.

A more apt metaphor for parenthood I know not.

Just to make my life easier, I am mildly reformatting this story from chat (and removing other people's comments, though one person described the dog breed in question as a giant horrifying ball of love, so I kept that).

[12:36] Lamprey met a Large Dog yesterday for the first time. She was Very Brave.

[12:37] (Met as in 'actually interacted with' rather than 'saw at a distance' or 'was barked at in a manner that scared *me*'.)

[12:39] My cousin (who is staying with my aunt and uncle for a month and change because the house she rents is someone's vacation house and they want to use it right now) owns a big black pit. So [KJ] met the pit while we were at the uncle's place (both before and after we went to the beach).

[12:41] First encounter of baby and big black pit:

Dog: *SLURP SLURP*
Baby: *dubious ew-face*

[12:43] Second encounter:

Baby: *cautious, crawling approach*
Dog: *sits up perkily* HIHIHI.
Baby: *sits up sharply, starts to wail in terror* *crawls for me* HUGS PLS NAO SCAAAAARED.

[12:44] Chunks of much of the rest of the afternoon:

Dog: HIHI?
Baby: *pulls back, stares*
Dog: ... aw. *wanders off*

[12:45] Evening:

Dog: HI?
Baby: ... you look maybe pettable. Hrm.

[12:46] Before we left:

Dog: *flop on floor*
Baby: *cautious crawling approach*
Dog: *still flopping*
Baby: ... there's a dog in my way. *crawls around dog, sits at dog's head* I HAS A GLEE.
Dog: Whuh?

(That was yesterday, when we went down to the Cape.)