sentences

Yesterday was Mother's Day and as Ada gave me the greatest present of all, a three hour nap through brunch that Elliot cooked, I had a chance to reflect on what an amazing and incomparable experience motherhood is. To this point, Ada has started to push her vocabulary to include sentences, or at least semblances of sentences so that Mommy can understand what she is saying, without my prompting. The pride I felt the first time I realized she was actually understanding the concept of language beyond the repetition we practice each day on our way home from school was equivalent to every great accomplishment I've ever accomplished in my life. Who knew.

safety first

Today Ada's daycare class hosted a Mother's Day Tea, I was actually shocked that it was time for Mother's Day, but such is the life of a mother of a toddler, they suck away all concept of time. But I digress. Since they held the tea in the morning I was able to attend, YAY.

Ada and I arrived just as they were starting the tea, and they situated all of the kids around the little tiny tables they eat all their snacks and lunches at. Then, they brought out little tiny chairs for the three moms that showed up, and we got to sit next to our little ones. Ada seemed at a loss - what in the world is MOM still doing here? But her buddy Reese was very excited to see me and kept talking to me throughout the whole tea. Reese and I are now officially buddies.

The tea consisted of little croissants and iced tea for the parents and apple juice for the kids. While we ate, Miss Claire read us a nice book and then led the kids through a wonderful rendition of "If you are happy and you know it" and "Slippery Fish". During the performances all of the kids and Moms ate and drank and when they were done, all of Ada's classmates got up one by one to throw away their trash and then progressed to play time. All but Ada. She didn't get up because, well, she was still eating. And not a second or third helping. She was savoring every last bite of croissant like it was flown in, fresh that day from Paris. I can attest that it was not. And as I was prodding Ada, asking her if she was all done, Miss Claire came over and told me about Ada's ability to draw a bite of food out all morning long. This doesn't surprise me, this is the Caruso part of her lineage coming out (Elliot is famous for this). BUT the second part of what Miss Claire said made me wonder a little bit. When she is FINALLY done eating, Ada will not rush to get up so she can quickly get to the toys, nope, she sits there watching all the other kids, almost as if she is waiting for something. We all know that Ada likes to observe things that are new to her, but kids getting up and playing shouldn't be a new concept at this point. So I started to wonder what she might be contemplating as she finishes her meal. Then it dawned on me, SAFETY. As everyone knows, you should really wait 30 minutes after eating before you start running around again. Otherwise you cramp up and have to take a break.

And I can just imagine what is running through Ada's head each day, "Sure, play hard now, but don't come crying to me later when you want to dance with me during circle time and you cramp up while trying to pull off my new 'hip jerk, swivel, bop' move. You only have yourself to blame." Our little safety monitor.

swimming with fishes

I have mentioned before that Ada loves her Baby Signing time, and aside from the sign for 'owie' Ada's favorite sign is by far the sign for "fish". Before signing time I don't think Ada had any idea what a fish was, aside from a tasty treat that Auntie Jackie brought down from Seattle. So imagine our surprise when we happened upon the Pigmy Hippo display at the Zoo - which just happened to have many many fishes swimming around with the Hippos - and Ada ran up to the glass and started wildly doing the sign for fish and shouting 'fissshh, fissshh, FISSHH'. Somehow, Ada was able to make the connection between the animated fish on the Signing Time DVD and the real live fish in the tank.

As parents you have these wonderful moments, Eureka moments, where you realize that you have just found something that your child loves so much they will do anything, ANYTHING, to get that thing they love so SO much. When Ada carried on for over 10 minutes at the Pigmy Hippo display, in awe of the tiny little fish, I had one of those moments. So this weekend, as we prepared for a trip to SeaWorld I used Ada's love for fish to get her to do everything she has been refusing to do lately. Our morning went a little something like this:

"Ada, do you want to get dressed?"
"No"
"Ada, do you want to go see fish? Well then you need to put on pants."
"Ok"
"Ada, can I put up your hair?"
"No"
"Ada, do you want to see fish? Well then we need to brush your hair and get it out of your face"
"silence as she thrust her brush at me"

And we did see fish, lots and lots of fish. And Ada, she was clean, groomed, and well dressed while she plastered her body against the aquarium glass given the leopard sharks smooshy face.

ada loves daddy

Every day when I drive Ada home she sits, looking bored, in her car seat, waiting. Waiting for the time when we pull into the driveway and she knows that she is just moments away from seeing her DADDY. When she sees the house she immediately starts shouting, "DADDY! DADDY! DAAAAADDDDDYYYYY!!!!" And some days she is lucky enough that Elliot hears us pulling into the driveway and he comes out to help me unload the car, in those cases, she gets to see DADDY right away. She loves those nights.

So last night as we were driving home Ada was looking particularly bored so I started going through her list of words. Recently she was able to say a version of the word "love". Doesn't surprise me she hears it about 600,000 times a day thanks to her over obsessive mommy. Anyway, as we were going through all of Ada's words she said "love" really well, so I thought I'd try out a "I love you" which she got pretty good, so we then tried "I love Daddy" which was again a success. When we got to "I love Mommy" she had grown bored of the exercise and said something like "yellow". I'm trying not to take it personally.

We moved on to some other words and did some car dancing, forgetting all about Ada's love fest. Until we got home of course and she started her "DADDY" demanding. This was Ada's lucky night. Elliot heard us pull in and came out to help out. So when he picked Ada up, I asked her if she could say "I love Daddy" and of course she did, loud and clear.

I think I saw Elliot's heart melt as his body simultaneously twisted so that it was wrapped around her pinkie finger.

what I did on my vacation..

We are back from Boston. One ankle hobbled, and two whole bodies a little more sore than when we left. We had a great time on our little parents only vacation, and the marathon was an unbelievable experience. But, after 4 days away from our little Adabeta - Elliot and I were anxious to get our hands on Ada and smother her with kisses and tickles and hugs. But Ada, at her young age, was not quite ready for that. So last night she slowly warmed up to us, went through all of her new tricks, and then started showing off her new favorite word. "No."

She was using this with more regularity before we left, but last night and this morning she was down right determined to use it. Over and over and over and over again. I think this might be like the word "Up". She only knows "Up" not "Down" so when she is up and she wants down she says "Up". Right now she doesn't really know how to say "Yes". She says "ssssss" really really quietly, but that is about it. Since she doesn't know how to say "Yes" and really really really knows how to say "No", I'm hoping that she is just confused and says "No" when she means "Yes", well some of the time at least. So now I counter her chorus of "No. no. no. no..... no" with a chorus of "Yes. yes. yes. yes.... YES" and hopefully she'll pick it up.

If not, we are shipping her off to Auntie Katie's house permanently. Because obviously she picked it up from Katie, we never use words like "No" in our house. :)

baby gifts

Elliot and I are preparing to leave on our first non-Ada travel EVER. We are going all the way to Boston to run the marathon on Monday and Ada gets to stay in San Diego with her Auntie Katie. So all week I've been trying to prepare Ada for what is to come this weekend. Telling her that mommy and daddy are going on an airplane - which is followed by 5 minutes of Ada pointing to the sky or the ceiling saying airpane, airpane, AIRPANE... next we tell her that she will get to go to soccer and hockey with Katie and that she will probably also get to hang out with Thea, Katie's dog - followed by a chorus of doggie, doggie, DOGGIE!! I'm not sure how much she understands, and how much she thinks I'm just trying to get her to work on her vocabulary, but this morning, after polishing off her milk she snuggled in for a little cuddle time, and I thought, well maybe she knows we are going to be gone soon and she is giving us a little going away gift. Then she kicked Elliot in the chest, and elbowed me in the face and I realized she was just suckering us in so she could REALLY let us know how she feels about this trip.

a little slice of heaven

I have talked in length in the past about shoes. My love of shoes, Ada's love of shoes, and of course the large number of pairs of shoes Ada owns as a 1 year old. Well, Ada has recently moved up a size in her shoes and now is missing one or two of the essential shoe types (girly sneakers, and girly sandals). So last night we took a family trip to Target to pick up a few things including some new shoes for Ada. This is the first time that Ada has been really actively mobile while we did shoe shopping and when we turned our cart down the little girl shoe aisle you could see her mind jumping all over itself because, the shoes.. oh the shoes, there are soo many shoes, so many pretty shoes. In Ada's version of heaven, there is an endless supply of shoes in all sizes and colors for her to try on all day long if she wants.

As Elliot and I searched for practical choices to fill out Ada's size 6 shoe collection, Ada pulled glittery shoe after glittery shoe out of the boxes. She had her current shoes off faster than I have ever seen her remove any article of clothing and spent the next 20 minutes trying on shoe after shoe. It was amazing to watch her study the shoes, position them so she can get them on her little feet, and then gently place first her left, then her right foot into the shoes. Over time she figured out it was easier to put the shoes on if they were a few sizes to big which just added to the cuteness. Most of her choices were impractical - think pink jelly shoes, silver ballerina slippers, and glittery flats - but to Ada these are really the only kind of shoes you need.

I suspect that Ada's Auntie Julie had been holding little fashionista workshops while she babysits. How else can you explain a one year old with better fashion sense than her Mom?