Entries from October 2010 ↓

On July 15 for a couple hours I wrote down most of what Ezri was saying.
Here is what that sounded like (approximately as some of her words aren’t standard pronunciation yet, but I could tell what she meant):
bottle
ginger (referring to a neighborhood cat)
no
more
uh-oh (grape goes onto the floor)
grape
Manchi
bagel
I-see-you
up
choo-choo
nipple
dada
soon
pen
ding-dong (the doorbell noise)
mama shower (said because I had wet hair)
glasses (said because I did not yet have my glasses on in the morning and an Amanda without glasses is not right)
tail
bedtime
hair
round round
finger
clap-clap
fish
bye
shoes
buckle
towel
wet
wee-ooo wee-ooo (siren noise)
duck
quack
tickle
hat
frog
keys
ear
baby
wash
cat
poop
mirror
monkey
nose
Mark
grandma
tam-ma
belly
fan
swing
Ezri
Harvey

The morning featured mostly unconnected single words. Mostly they are nouns.

Then I did this again last month on September 25.
Here is what that sounded like (approximately):
Bump head
Ellie brush (Ezri wanted Eric to brush our cat Ellie)
Ellie necklace (How Ezri describes Ellie’s collar)
Ellie fur
Ezri potty
Potty box (we recently acquired a potty though Ezri is still in diapers and she was playing with the box it came in)
Sushi hair brush
Sushi brush time
Ezri hiccup
a paw
Leave it down
Mama porch (Ezri went out on the porch and this was her request that I join her)
cheers (cheerios)
grapes
roll, roll, sugarbabies clap-clap-clap (a Favorite fingerplay from library storytime)
Inga-inga
dada
Dada back here
Ezri cheers (eating cheerios)
Ezri water (drinking from her sippy cup)
Silly Sally went to town (from the book Silly Sally by Audrey Wood)
Ezri drink it
This bottle
Hippo yawn bug teeny boys girls in betweeny ( a favorite rhyme slightly garbled)
MOUSE! (When asked if she wanted to go to storytime)
Dada mitten
Apple
Owls Dancing (a favorite video clip)
Ezri No Poop Just Fart (very informative)
Cow Cookies (after a favorite book The Cow Loves Cookies by Karma Wilson)

On this second day, she is saying some verbs and two word phrases which often lack the verb. She’s also doing a lot of quoting her favorite songs, books, and rhymes.

Sometimes it takes some detective work to figure out what she is talking about. I am glad for example that her babysitter told me about asking Ezri when she was digging with a stick at the park if she was digging to China. Now Ezri will pick up a stick, tap the ground and say “Ezri China.” Without the background this statement makes little sense.

Yesterday in the car she started saying “Tricky Daddy,” and “Argle Flargle.” Sure this sounds like nonsense, but I figured out “Argle Flargle” was the nonsense words the baby says in the book Knuffle Bunny. Then Eric said, “Oh, Tricky daddy is Trixie’s daddy!” as the baby’s name is Trixie in the book and it is the adventures of her and her daddy.

Ezri knows what she’s talking about, but her parents don’t always.

Yesterday for the first time she did all of the fingerplay “roll, roll sugarbabies” including the push and pull which she has always left out before. She also sang correctly most of the lyrics to Twinkle, Twinkle Time for Bed (A Rookie Toddler Book from Scholastic – all of this line of Rookie Toddler books seem to be perfectly pitched for where my toddler is now).

It’s so great that Ezri can tell us things now.

What a difference a year makes?
Last year Ezri just sat by the pumpkins.
This year she can pick them up.
Here’s last year.

When I asked if Ezri wanted to ride in her car, she said,”No, stroller walk.” I was surprised that she wanted to ride in her stroller instead of the newly beloved car. But, then she grabbed her doll stroller and put her pig in it saying, “buckle-buckle.” She drug the stroller towards the door and said, “Piggy stroller walk. Ezri push.” Now I understood. So, we went out for a stroller walk of a different sort.

Her increasing language skills continue to amaze me as we get intelligible sentences and she gets better at getting her point across verbally.

It’s getting harder to return library books.
This week Ezri helped me put the books in the book drop slot.
She said, “Bye-bye I Know Rhino” as the book I Know A Rhino by Charles Fuge dropped into the book return and “Bye-bye Cloppity” as she dropped Clip-Clop by Nicola Smee. She also seemed sad when she realized these books weren’t coming back. Though when I told her Miss Rachel had a cat puppet over by the story room, her sadness disappeared in cries of “Kitty!” The short attention span can certainly be a beneficial feature of the toddler.

I Know a Rhino is a book of simple rhymes about a girl playing with animals she knows. The girl has tea with a rhino, dances with an ape, plays dress-up with a leopard, bathes with a giraffe and so on. The book ends with the little girl asleep with a pile of stuffed animals who are her animal friends from the rhymes. The nice rhyming pace and illustrations of everyday toddler fun make this a good one.

Clip-Clop features a horse offering rides to four other barnyard friends. The horse goes faster and faster making a clippity cloppity sound until the animals on his back start to fall off. When Mr. Horse makes a sudden stop, the animals fly over his head into a hay stack. Mr. Horse is concerned for his friends, but when they all yell, “AGAIN!” he knows that all is well. Ezri also said “again” for the reading of this book. I bounced her on my lap during the horse’s ride which added to the fun.

I can’t believe it has been about a year since I left my job at the Downers Grove library, but I am still there every week with Ezri. She is getting better at picking out her own books. I am letting her pick a couple herself from the shelf. Sometimes they are much too long, but then we just skim and explore them together. We don’t always bring them home, but it is fun to explore books at her direction.

Ezri has admired the big kids playing football. She says “Big kids running. Big kids ball.” And now here she is at the bottom of a toddler tackle.

Don’t worry the soundtrack on that tackle involved a whole lot of giggling.

Plus she also got hugs.

And here two girls are mesmerized by a train whistle.

Ezri enjoyed apple picking. Well, she really enjoyed apple eating, but she liked running around the apple trees and seeing ladybugs and examining fallen fruit too.

She also decided the best way to test a pumpkin for possible purchase was by sitting on it.

Only one pumpkin proved rolly enough to slip from under her and leave her flat on her bottom. Pumpkin vines also proved to be trip hazards. The fun of pumpkin-sitting made it all worth it.

Eric read a story to Ezri and some collected friends in an after-apple-picking calm moment.

Funny hats, cupcakes, crafts and pizza.
Ezri liked to party.
Not to mention she got to see all the other fun toddlers with whom to play.

The tunnel was deployed.

Happy second birthday, Irina!

Ezri seems fascinated with trying to climb into the cat carrier.