Entries from September 2010 ↓

Just a few new words of the last week or so:
Raspberry (thanks, Susan)
Slideshow
Turkey Vulture
Vet
Hedgehog (on her new p.j.’s)
Ernie (rubber ducky video is awesome)
Football (saw junior high practice)
Shaky Egg
Ashes Ashes All Fall Down (thanks, Julia, except she’s not so good at pronouncing the “sh” sound so it comes out as just a “sss” and that’s just funny)
Bobcat
Red dot
Koala
So, we’ve gotten well beyond just “ball” and “cat.”

And a few phrases we are hearing more and more:
“New diaper time”
“Ezri fall down”
“Dirty [insert object here – socks, pants,shoes, cracker]”
“Ezri do it”
“[insert here – cat, mama, Sushi, etc.] eat”
“[insert here – baby, puppy, dada, Manchi] sleepy”
One more time.
Again. (yes, those last two mean the same thing, but it’s worth trying them both to see if either will get Ezri another swing, snack, story, song, tick-tock)
More cookie, please. (that one was clearly worth learning and she says it very well)
And there are probably a million more that I am not thinking of just now.

We’ve created a book monster!
Now that she can ask for books by name, she’s learned the age old bedtime prolonging ploy of demanding another story.
As Eric is trying to put Ezri down to bed, I hear “Teeth” and out comes Eric to find My Teeth by the Milestones Project.
Later I hear, “Pookie” and out comes Eric to find the book What’s Wrong Little Pookie? by Boynton.
Ezri can ask for story after story and that doesn’t even count the times she says, “again,” as a given story concludes.

Here are a couple we’ve enjoyed this week:

Puppies, Pussycats and Other Friends by Gyo Fujikawa
This is a board book reprint of a children’s book from 1975. The very cute illustration are almost cute overload, but in a style I enjoy – Japanese retro 70s sweet so they worked for me. There isn’t a story here just illustrations of children with various animals with simple descriptive text – “Some animal friends are very small like fishes and frogs.” Ezri really enjoyed the page with children climbing on an enormous elephant. She also responded to the silliness of the line of seven children each with a different small animal on his or her head – squirrel, gerbil, parakeet, hamster, and so on. She also now tries to read to the cats. She wanted to find and show Sushi (our cat) the page with Mrs. Cat and her kittens.

Sesame Street strikes again!
Baby Play by The Sesame Street Workshop
This board book consists of 5 two page spreads each with a photograph of a baby and Sesame St. puppets interacting in an activity.
Two monsters play music with a baby beating a drum. The book invites the reader to “Pat-pat-pat on the pages of this book.” Ezri knows this is the page we pat and make honking noises on. Ezri is down with that. The next page features Grover and a baby trying on hats. Elmos tickles a baby on the page and Ezri will tickle me when we read this page. Ernie is giving a bath to a baby on the next page. Ezri points at the towel, bubbles, and duck and says these words as they are all familiar to her. She points out that the baby is “wet.” The book invites the reader to point at the bubbles and say, “pop.” This is also a game Ezri enjoys. The last page is a baby helping Big Bird get ready for naptime. The reader is invited to sing Big BIrd a lullaby. Ezri likes to sing “twinkle twinkle little star” and point out how Big BIrd is “sleepy.” So the invitation to interact along with the likable puppets and photos of babies make this one a repeated read for us. There are so many words Ezri knows and can say associated with the title which adds enjoyment for both of us.

Then she took off her shoes.

Here she said “Ezri no shoes.”
Her language gets more sentence-like all the time.
We were passed by the North High track team and Ezri said, “Big kids running.”
From the backseat of the car I heard, “Mama driving,” followed by Ezri reaching toward the front seat and saying “Inga inga” (a noise of desire) followed by “Ezri driving.”
Both Eric and I are charmed by her definitive three nods of the head for an affirmative response.
And her answer of, “good,” when asked if we should go to the park.

She’s also just started describing past events.
Or her parents got smart enough to notice her re-running her day at bedtime saying who she saw or where she went.
We had friends over for dinner and Ezri likes to point at the seats and name who sat in them previously.

She’s only getting better at speaking, climbing, and charming.