Just another CarleSpawn weblog

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.

Ezri has learned the word Madison.

We went on a day trip a couple weeks ago to visit our friends, Nikki and Chris. They have two guinea pigs and a stuffed animal guinea pig that very much impressed our toddler.

We ran into traffic surrounding the Gay Pride Parade on State Street which we were unaware of, though we did enjoy its after party which included a cover band playing the music of ABBA. Ezri likes to dance – a toddler dancing queen. She was also declared “precious” by a lesbian couple – her parents agree.

We went to the capitol and took these photos.

We visited the UW terrace and saw ducks. Ezri likes to “quack.”

We had really excellent ice cream. Ezri is not into ice cream so much, but even she recognizes the joy of strawberry ice cream in Madison.

Ezri found all sorts of interesting new things to play with on campus.

A great day trip.

At the park today, Ezri really wanted to try to climb the climbing net on the jungle gym.
She is often told that certain equipment on the playground is just for “big kids” and then steered towards safer equipment – shorter slides, toddler swings, ramps without 5 foot drops on one side.

But, today she wanted to climb so badly that I thought we’d give it go with me spotting her carefully.
She started climbing and as she rose I heard her softly chanting, “big kid, big kid, big kid, big kid” all the way up and then with a great effort she scrabbled up onto the platform at the top.
At this moment, I had to hustle up quickly to make sure she didn’t go for any of the drop offs from the platform. I hadn’t expected her to make it all the way up.
I am very proud of my big kid.
She was pretty proud of herself too.

She climbed the net again for this photo, though she did not repeat the feat of getting onto the top platform.

Later she took a tumble walking down the stairs she’s been able to navigate safely for months and I thought she may be a big kid, but she still needs watching at the park.

More books Ezri can now ask for by name (or her name for the book at least):
“Fox in Socks” which is the Dr. Seuss Classic
“Sleepy” which is Don’t Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late by Mo Willems
“BEDTIME!” which is Ten Minutes Till Bedtime by Peggy Rathman
“Teeth” which is My Teeth from Tricycle Press
“Kiss kiss” which refers to one of several books featuring kissing including Pajama Mamas by Spohn, Counting Kisses by Katz, and Kiss Goodnight by Amy Hess.
“Uh-oh” which refers to any of the Diaper David books by Daivd Shannon.
“Elmo wet” which refers to It’s Not Easy Being Big! by Stephanie St. Pierre

I’ll start with a couple books that Ezri is drawn to that I am not sure would be as especially appreciated by her peers.
It’s Not Easy Being Big! by Stephanie St. Pierre
This book is about when it’s hard for Sesame Street’s Big Bird to be big like when he’s too big to ride a tricycle or too big to hide in a game of hide and seek. Then the book switches to Elmo and talks about when it’s hard to be small.
This is where Ezri’s favorite page occurs. Elmo is “too small to cross” and falls in a puddle.
Ezri noticed that Elmo sitting in the puddle was wet. It’s not in the text that he’s wet nor did I tell her. I think the fact that she made this independent conclusion and is also fascinated with wetness make this page such a draw for her.
She will listen to the whole book, but I know she is just waiting to say, “Elmo wet!”

Babybug the March 2010 Issue
I think this magazine would be great for any toddler, but this issue being superlative may just be my kid.
Babybug magazine is generally a hit. There is a regular feature written Kim and Carrots written by Clara Vulliamy about a 2 year old girl named Kim and her daily activities with her stuffed rabbit, Carrots. After reading Kim’s story, Ezri dug through her toys to find her stuffed rabbit. While Ezri enjoys all her Babybug magazines, she LOVES the March 2010 issue which has a rhyme called Yawns by Pamela Love. We first read this to her on our vacation in Montana and it made an impression there last month. It was helped along by the fact that her grandparents and parents all made yawning noises for her. The rhyme goes like this, ” A hippo has a giant yawn. A ladybug’s is teeny. Little girls and boys have yawns that are in-betweeny.” We make the yawn noises together and it is inexplicably awesome to Ezri. Eric and I don’t need the book for this one when it is requested we have memorized it. I don’t know if it’s the memory of reading this on vacation or the joy of yawning or the fact that she likes to try to say the word “girl.” The other favorite part of this issue is High Five by Lucy Ford about a kid with small hands and a daddy with big hands doing a high five. This means now if you give Ezri a high five she will then ask for dada to give her one, even if dada is at the office. Dads clearly give the best high fives.

These are a couple hits that I think have strong general appeal for the younger toddler.
Global Babies by the Global Fund for Children
This one was given to Ezri by her doctor as part of a program to get young kids books during their required doctor visits called Reach out and Read. The text is very simple saying that whatever babies do and wherever they are, they are special and they are loved. The book is filled with close up photos of babies from different parts of the world and there is also small text on each page letting you know where the photo was taken. Ezri likes to point out which babies are sleepy. Being sleepy and being awake are big concepts for her right now. When you get to the page of the baby who is from Bhutan, Ezri will point at it and loudly say, “futon!” She says, “Rock!” on the page of the baby from Iraq.

My Teeth by Tricycle Press and the Milestone Project
This is another board book of photos of babies from diverse nations. It is also a counting book. First there is a baby with no teeth and then 1 tooth, 2 teeth, and on up to 10 teeth. These counting pages are followed by a photo of a toddler with an ear of corn and the text, “Bite!” The last page shows a toddler brushing with the text, “Let’s brush!” Ezri loves to point at the teeth on each page and even does a bit of counting (though not always sequentially correctly – she often skips the number 9 because of the verse in a favorite song that counts to 10 skipping 9 because 7 ate 9).

Rookie Toddler Series from Children’s Press an imprint of Scholastic
We have checked out three Rookie Toddler titles from the library and all three have been appreciated by Ezri.
Everywhere a Moo, Moo is a shortened version of Old MacDonald had a farm tailored to shorter attention spans with photos of barnyard animals.
Will You Wear a BLUE Hat? is a book about getting dressed and picking out clothing that is sung to the tune of Mary Wore Her Red Dress.
Those first two had the great appeal of being sung. I think we may seek more books with a tune. The third one did not have a tune, but was equally appreciated.
Hide-and-Peek shows a stuffed bear and a stuffed rabbit being over, on, under, in front of, behind and in a box. Ezri and I have duplicated scenes from the book with our own stuffed animals and box. In addition to learning prepositions this seems to fascinate her and I always appreciate a new toddler game.