TA-DAA!!!

Recently Ada was enjoying her dinner and, clearly impressed with her own ability to successfully shovel at least some of the food on her plate into her mouth, raised her arms victoriously over her head and exclaimed "Ta-daa!!!". Sitting on the stool in front of her, I provided what seemed to be the appropriate response by raising my arms in kind and returning the ta-daa.

Ada was delighted by this exchange and followed it with the logic of any 2 year old - if something is funny once, it should be repeated ad nauseum. I played along, mirroring her ta-daas dutifully. After what seemed like the 30th go-round of ta-daas, I decided to inject some variety into my end of the performance by responding with clapping and a hearty "yeah Ada!". Ada pondered this response for a moment then raised her arms up for another ta-daa. I again responded with clapping and "yeah Ada!". After a short pause and a confused frown, Ada addressed me with the restrained frustration of someone explaining an obvious concept to a not-so-swift student. "No daddy," she said slowly, "not yeah Ada. Ta-daa." while raising her arms instructively. Thus chastened, I returned to the proper response and Ada was happily ta-daa-ing again.

I say la mesa, you say...

Being the over-informed and freaked-out modern parents that we are, Katie and I take Ada to a toddler Spanish class every Saturday morning, concerned that our collective foreign language skills, being barely sufficient to order a ham sandwich in Paris, will permanently stunt Ada's ability to pick up other tongues.

Neither Katie or I have studied Spanish, so we struggle along with Ada trying to pick up the new vocabulary. This is fine in class, where the ever patient Miss Linda encourages our feeble attempts to help out as if we were just a few more two-year old students, happy if we just make an attempt at saying the words and make it through class without wetting ourselves. At home, it's a little tougher. As parents we feel duty-bound to reinforce Miss Linda's teachings in spite of our complete incompetence with the subject matter. This primarily consists of repeating colors and numbers in Spanish while reading with Ada, but occasionally we'll chuck in a random word out of the blue.

The other night Ada was sitting in her high chair finishing up with dinner. As usual, a good portion of her mac and cheese had found its way on to the chair's tray, the surrounding floor, and probably some not so obvious places we'll only discover when we move out of the house. I grabbed a sponge and handed it to Ada, asking her to clean "la mesa" - no doubt this clever use of Spanglish was delivered with the perfect diction one would expect from mid-western Canadian. Leaving Ada to her cleaning, I stooped down to pick up some errant mac. When I stood up, Ada was looking at me with a puzzled expression while dutifully using the sponge to clean the top of her head. No doubt she found it odd that her dad would ask her to clean her "cabeza" while "la mesa" clearly had a mess on it. I took heart that she was willing to follow instructions from her dad, no matter how idiotic, but I fear her foreign language skills may still be doomed.

starbucks

This morning as I was helping Ada get ready, Elliot asked me if I wanted coffee for the road. Meaning that he was going to make me a latte for my travel mug that I could drink on my way in. Ada heard this and immediately stopped what she was doing and ran to the door shouting "COFFEE, I WANT COFFEE". Now before you think we have already started Ada on a steady drip of caffeine, Ada gets either a steamed milk or a cold milk from Starbucks when we go out for coffee. This is usually a Sunday morning treat when Elliot and I are still rubbing the sleep out of our eyes and Ada needs to burn off a little energy.

Well this morning I needed to desperately get out the door at 7:45 or earlier due to my first meeting time, so a motivated Ada was a good thing. Elliot and I told her we could go to coffee if she hurried up and got her shoes and socks on. Ada took this as MOMMY needed to get her shoes on. So she ran back to our bedroom shouting "Mommy get your shoes and socks on." Like I was going to ruin the whole coffee opportunity for her.

We managed to get out the door on time and as soon as we got to Starbucks, Ada busted through the door and ran straight to the cooler where she picked out her milk and handed it to Elliot. You could almost see the sigh of relief as she watched Elliot pay for her milk and hand it back over.

If she is this addicted to Starbucks now, I'd hate to see her after pulling an all nighter.

so proud

We started potty training Ada over the Thanksgiving holiday and after the first weekend Elliot and I were both silently thinking maybe we had attempted too much too soon. But Ada with some help from day care has proved us wrong.

One thing we did change was her napping and bedtime condition. The day care instructions on potty training stated that they would not diaper her during nap time and that they requested that we did not diaper during nap OR night time at home. Being good little instruction followers we tried this, until Ada's teacher told us that they were diapering her during nap time. OMG!! Once we flipped to sleepy time diapering it took all of the trauma out and Ada is now well on her way to being potty trained. We still have an accident here or there, but Ada is very good about telling us she has to go to the bathroom, or that she needs a "diaper change", or saying out loud, "I'm holding it, I'm holding it". I'd like to say that it is Ada's maturity that has helped us make so much progress is so little time, but really I think it is the promise of Elmo and Princess big girl underwear, as Ada insists on wearing nothing but "Big Girl UNDERPANTS!" At least she has goals.

I could not be more proud!

making out like a band-aid

Ada is talking up a storm these days. And repeating. Repeating EVERYTHING she hears. This has presented some funny situations, and we are frequently reminded that kids definitely say the funniest things EVER.

The other night as we wrapped up a shopping trip to the mall where Ada walked away with 80% of our purchases we commented on how Ada was "making out like a bandit" that night. Ada, trying her best to sound cool, confirmed our statement with, "I made out like a band-aid". A Tinkerbell band-aid, I'm sure.