Dada Bread

Eric has mastered the art of making the "5 Minutes a Day" bread. It's more like 10-15 minutes to make up the dough, which then stays in the fridge until it's time to shape it and bake it. We bake up a fresh loaf every other day or so. Tess calls it "Dada bread."

Medicine

Tess is a little constipated and has been complaining about her "tummy hurting" for a couple of days. Today I was trying to get her to drink some water, telling her, "it will make your tummy feel better." She nodded and came over willingly, drinking at first, but also starting to open up her pajamas. "Put on tummy!" she told me. I never could convince her that it was going to help her tummy by drinking it. She just kept wanting me to put the "medicine" right on the problem.

Talking Has Begun

At about 6:30 in the morning. Eric was showering and Tess ran up to the bathroom door and called out for him. He replied, "Dada is in the shower. Can you wait a minute?"
"Yeah," she said. Then she ran to me. I was still in bed.
"Mama! Dada in shower. And I waiting a minute."

"Mama! Na (Lenny) coming tonight! And we watch Shaun the Sheep on TV."

"I want to make eggs." (or she likes to help me make smoothies, because the blender makes so much noise. So she says, "make moothy. Noise!")

Her communication surprises me regularly. Just now, she was saying, "Mama, food!" She had her magnetic dolls on her lap, and was playing doll clothes with them, so I couldn't figure out what she meant, but she kept insisting, "food! food!" Then she picked up one of her dolls and held it out to show me, and there was a bit of food dried to its leg that she wanted me to remove.

"Jackson try (cry). Blue crayon." (She regularly likes to talk about a moment when she snatched a blue crayon out of Jackson's hand and it made him cry.)

"Mama, wake Dada up?" (She asked me this regularly this morning when I was trying to let Eric sleep in.) "Read books with Dada! Play towers with Dada! Dada wake up!"

"Mama, owie!" She showed me her thumb. It was a little red.
"Did you burn it?" I asked.
"Yeah."
"Where?" I asked. (Not sure if I'd get an answer.)
"In Dada's room. I touch radiator. Burn finger. Owie."

"I don't like it!" "I don't like it _(if she knows the word for what she doesn't like she inserts it here.)__"
"I don't want it!" "I don't want ________."
(These two sentences she learned from Sebastian, and she says them in his exact tone, with his little whine and everything. I think she might even be picking up his Polish accent. :))

Happy New Year

This year I taught Tess how to say "Happy New Year!" When her birthday came a week later, she never really figured out Happy Birthday. So now when she sees birthday cupcakes or balloons, she'll say,"Happy New Year!"

Snow Day!

The snow was piled up high this morning. Eric's office was closed, so he was working from home. This was good, because for the past two nights he's been working until 2am on a computer change. Eric slept in until 8, and then he helped me carry Tess to her babysitter's. I'm not sure how I would have managed it alone, because it was impossible to get the stroller through the intersections and she's too heavy for me to carry for long distances. I took these pictures on our way home in the afternoon. As you can see, the sidewalks were mostly cleared by then.

And then tonight I had my writing class. This semester I was invited to a private class that a favorite writing teacher holds out of her apartment. There are eight of us in the class, and I am really enjoying it a lot.

Oh! And I finished knitting my first hat. I finished it in less than three weeks, which surprised me, perhaps because I've always taken on bigger projects.

Conversation

I find that Tess and I are having actual conversations throughout the day now. They are very simple, but regularly surprise me.

"Morning Mommy!" She'll greet me each day, often long before I'm feeling so chipper.
"Mama, mama, light off! Mama, Dada's seeping (sleeping)! Nurse, mama."
Then, after nursing...
"Tess do you want to lay down and go to sleep?"
"No, I want to daw (draw)." (Or, I want to play doll shoes. I want to eat. I want to watch Shaun the Sheep. Etc. This week it's always been draw.)

Today when I took her to play with Ime and Sebastian, Tess approached Ime, put her arm around her back, and so want to converse with her. I could see from the concentration on her face that she was working so hard to come up with some words to share. Ime, who is a full year older, looked at Tess with uncertainty, wondering why she was standing so close. Finally, Tess found some words. She tried to tell Ime about one of the Shaun the Sheep episodes that scares her.

"Ime! Shaun, Shaun the Sheep. The bees! And Shaun and the bees. And scary!" She said this in a deeply serious voice, nodding her head for emphasis and waving her hand up and down, her face expectantly studying Ime, hoping Ime is impressed. But Ime couldn't make sense of it.

Tess is trying all the time to retell. We ask her "what happened?" all the time, and she replies, "happen this." or "happen Shaun clean up."

When she works out a full sentence for something that has happened, she will repeat it over and over again. "Pigs push Shaun," is a sentence she has worked out, and she tells us about that moment often.

Then yesterday Tess got too close to Ime when Ime was using a new toy and Ime was afraid Tess was going to take her toy, so she pushed her away and it knocked Tess to the ground. Tess sat there stunned as Sandra came over and reprimanded Ime. Ime apologized and then moved to protect her toy and Tess still hadn't said or done anything in all this time. Finally, she looks at me and says, "Mama! Ime push Tess. Ime push Tess." She wasn't upset, but seemed more astonished and kind of excited to have the words to be able to recount the whole thing to me.

Resuming Blogging

So I haven't posted in, oh let's not think about it. Since posting last about Tess's first stomach flu, she recovered, then started vomiting five days later on our vacation in Florida. Eric and I then got sick. We all flew home a week later, and then Tess had pink eye and a bad ear infection. The ear infection led to a series of doctor visits when the first antibiotic didn't work, the second gave her a bad rash, and the third finally broke her five-days of fever.

Four days ago Tess started sleeping through the night again, and we keep remarking on how happy she is and how much we enjoy her. We had forgotten her cheerful personality and funny antics.

In the midst of all this sickness, Tess turned 2! She's talking more and more each day. Wednesday night she wanted to make some videos, so we made these together.