A Day in the Life

Part of our bedtime ritual with Dada is reviewing the events of the day (sandwiched between stories and songs). It occured to me that it might be interesting, or at least blogish, to recount a typical summer Sunday.

Let's see, what did we do today? We got up and had some breakfast and Daddy made bacon and eggs for breakfast. Then we took the dogs to the dog park [as we do every Sunday]. At the dog park we saw Grace [another girl from China] and her mom but Grace wasn't feeling very well. "Grace crying" (or "cry-ning" as Dada says). Grace let you look at her book about princeses [total gender role propaganda of the worst sort]. Then we went home and Daddy ran an errand and you and Mommy read books and watched a little Chicken Run and had some lunch and then it was Quiet Time. We had a nice quiet time and then it was time to go to the pool and Auntie Joanna came over and we went to the pool but it was starting to rain when we got there and we couldn't go in the pool. That was sad because you wanted to go in the pool ("I go in pool, Daddy, I go in pool."). So we came home and Mommy went and got pizza and we played and then Joanna went home and and we watched Simpsons. Then we went outside and watched the chickens for a little while and then it was Bath Night. We had a bath and then it was time for Tooth Brushing and Vitamins and then it was time for Stories.

That pretty much sums it up. Some days we go shopping or to the Children's Museum (Monday is toddler day). Any day we can this time of year we go to the pool, either Deep Eddy (our favorite) or the East Side Y where they have the big slide. Dada really likes the pool.

What else is happening with Dada? She just went through a growth spurt, as indicated by the slight crankiness, the voracious appetite, and the extra sleep. She grew at least 3/4 inch from the end of June to now. Her toilet learning is coming along well--fewer accidents and demonstrated ability to hold it long enough to get to a toilet, even if Mommy has to go to three different stores before she finds one that works.

She's demonstrating remarkable Lego skills, able to build multiple towers with identical color patterns and block arrangements, using both the big toddler Legos and the medium-sized Duplos. Today she demonstrated that she can draw recognizable faces consisting of dots for eyes and straight lines for mouth, hair, and ears. Full mastery of her color names (underwear color seems to be a particular focus). She knows which way her shoes go (left from right) although I'm not 100% sure she actually understands the terms "left" and "right", but I think she does. She can put on her sandals, including putting the little velcro strap through the little buckle. She makes "airplanes" out of anything (three plastic knives, for example). She is facinated by tools and loves to use her scissors. She desperately wants to touch a chicken (but they tend to just peck at her outstretched hand). She loves to slide down the slide on her playscape. She also likes to play on the as-yet-still-unmoved pile of gravel at the front of the house (now about 8 tons down from 16 originally delivered). She likes spicy stuff (at lunch the other day she was pouring some medium spicy hotsauce onto her plate and licking it off her fingers). She picks up new vocabulary very quickly and has an amazing memory for small things, like what Julie and Uncle Jay were going to get at the Farmer's Market ("Eggs, tomatos, and bacon"). So it's clear that she pays close attention to whats' going on around her. She seems to be genuinely empathetic and able to correctly read the emotional states of others. We like to play at making different emotional faces in the mirror. She has a great mad face. She's starting to be able to sing songs more accurately and completely. She is not interested in wearing dresses (although she did wear a skirt the other day) but loves to pretend she is wearing a sarong ("like Daddy's"). She loves to read books and has started trying to "read" to us (she did that tonight at bed time, reading Goodnight Moon to us, which would have been really cute except that we were both really really tired and just wanted to get the damn books read already so we could move on to songs and get the child in bed). She's still a two-year-old and does her share of acting out when she's not getting full attention and still has poor impulse control but she does seem to be gaining a truer understanding of what is and isn't acceptable and appropriate. We've worked really hard on setting firm and consistent rules and consequences and we're starting to be a bit less forgiving when she does stuff that we know she knows is wrong. And mostly she is just an angel--she wakes up beaming and usually goes to bed happy and is mostly happy and charming for all the time inbetween. We thank our lucky stars every day because we know just how fortunate we are to have such an easy-going child.