Card-carrying member of the Antiheliocentric League of Preschoolers

I pick Caroline up to give her a goodnight hug and swirl around the room and think what a grown up girl she is now, almost too heavy for me to carry. Her face comes near to mine in size and her long legs and arms threaten to overturn the raft my arms make carrying her. I know my sense of proportion has changed since the baby was born (he seems big to me too, no longer a newborn now that he’s ten weeks old and 24 inches long), but when I set C down and we talk about school, her teachers and how she tries to listen to them, I guess I know what it feels like to have a big kid in the family.

Then we see the moon peeping through the chimney stacks above the house next door and C says, "Look, it’s the moon! He’s my friend you know, he follows me around when I go outside, and the sun does too. They are my special friends." And I remember that she is still a little girl and if the world might not always seem to revolve around her, at least the sun and the moon still do.

Language lessons

Caroline wants to add a new song to our going to bed repertory. It's a Czech song and I don’t know the words, so I promise to learn them from Teta Jarka and sing it tomorrow night.

But no. "Now!" she says, in a four year old sort of way. When I tell her I can’t, that I really don’t know it, she says "That’s okay Mommie." Then she starts, very slowly, to sing a phrase at a time, getting me to sing phrases back to her just the same. She even stops and corrects my pronunciation, and I make my lazy tongue work hard to sound Czech.

Afterwards, I can’t remember most of the words because I spend the lesson wondering when this jump in language arrived, and how C learned to teach someone to sing a song so slowly and still get the words just right.

After Caroline falls asleep I go to Google and look up Czech nursery songs until I find it:

Zajíček v své jamce
sedí sám, sedí sám.
Ubožáčku, co je ti,
že nemůžeš skákati?
Chutě skoč, a vyskoč!

Little rabbit in your den,
sitting alone, sitting alone,
poor little thing, why is it
that you cannot jump?
Try* to hop,
hop and skip!

The song is so apt somehow, such a good nudge for me and language learning, that I laugh when I translate it. Maybe it is time to hop out of my den of comfortably bad Czech and try again to hop and skip in this language C shares with me so patiently.

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*Want or desire to hop would be a closer translation but somehow try works better in English.

Word I-Spy

Word books for kids? Given the choice between taking or leaving 'em, I use to leave them every time. We have a few for their pictures, or because Caroline became desperately attached in a book store and the alternative was Barney, but once they joined her bookcase, I avoided reading them as much as I could - no plot, no quick page turning, nothing to sing or rhyme, horrors!

Then C and I discovered word I-spy. Word I-spy works like this: we pick a page from a word book and I’ll say, "I-spy a word that starts with a 'b' and ends with a 'k'." Caroline, most slowly and dramatically, will swirl over the page with her pointer finger until she finds the word. "Aha! b, double o, k. Here it is!" If the word is short enough, she’s started sounding it out too, "Buh oo k, book!! Okay mommie, my turn - can you find a word that starts with the letter..."

We’ve played this game every night for the last week or so, extending it into the early evening now that I’m sentenced to rest half the day and can’t run around as much as usual. Besides the thrill of hearing Caroline figure out words, word I-spy is also a great game, and it has the unlooked for advantage of keeping a new book novel for much longer (a page or three a night? fantastic!).

Tonight we finally finished Maisy’s Amazing Big Book of Words. The last page was all about Bedtime. I closed it with a satisfied thwack and started contemplating our other word books, "Hm, Richard Scarry or that slightly wacky English/Czech dictionary, then there is the photo book of words..."

But the choice for tomorrow had already been made. As Will picked up C to carry her off to bed, she yelled over his shoulder as they passed through the doorway, "Night night Mommie, we’ll wake Maisy up first thing tomorrow!"

A new chapter

Caroline and I are reading her first chapter book - Charlotte’s Web, a present from my brother. She wonders where the pictures are, but every night asks for more. We begin by skimming through what we've already read, looking at pictures and talking about what happened yesterday, the day before. Then we start reading the next chapter. Sometimes, while I’m reading, she’ll sit down beside her children in their bed on the floor and pat them, making sure they are happy and falling asleep. (The children are small stuffed animals, the bed a shoe box. They are wrapped in a cloth diaper.) Usually by the end of the first chapter she is ready to jump on the bed and on me to bounce out her energy. After a few jumps I grab her and we start reading again.

I’ve worked on the voices and she listens carefully when I get to Wilbur or Charlotte. I don’t have a good Templeton voice - Paul Lynde’s voice echoes but I can’t get its whiney tones right. Uncle Homer's voice is my favorite and I dig out all the gravel I can when I read his lines. E.B. White is a writer who knew how to edit. Every word is placed right and I read them all. It is a pleasure to do so.

Tonight when we finish our two chapters she roots through her bookcase for two more books - picture books from when she was a baby, Pat the Bunny and Just a Snowy Day. She reads them to me, and shows me each picture. She asks for five more minutes to read, so we kiss and I pull up her covers and say goodnight.

Scenes with a three year old

I may have to rethink movies with Caroline. This just in after a particularly painful thirty minute reenactment of cousin Colin in The Secret Garden. In case you don't remember the 1993 movie adaptation, bed-ridden Colin has a powerful set of lungs and the ability to throw himself heedlessly to the floor in a fit worthy of a three year old's awe. Tonight after watching the movie with me, Caroline rehearsed Colin’s tantrum in lieu of going to bed. She particularly worked on the high pitched screams interspersed with sobbing bit. When I started to sing along to match her highest shriek, she giggled but kept up the show until I turned off the lights and left her to her own devices. She is now humming to herself somewhere around middle C. Peace in our time.

C’s adoption of Colin at his worst isn’t too surprising. She has a habit of admiring the bad guy in a movie. During The Incredibles phase our household went through a year ago, Caroline liked to pretend she was the Bad Boy (aka Syndrome) and imagined every shoe into a rocket boot. When we pull out Wallace and Gromit: The Wrong Trousers, she hales Feathers the penguin as an old friend. I’ve caught C practicing speedy rail laying with her train set in case she needs to help Feathers out in his next venture. At least Feathers keeps his voice down.

And really, Caroline’s not so chatty either - talking about her day ranks way below flossing teeth on her list of fun things to do. She does like to act though. Today while we waited to sign her up for kindergarten, she tagged behind one prospective school mate, following him everywhere until he climbed up a slide backwards. Marie and I had just told her in both Czech and English not to climb up that very slide, and she obediently watched without following him, but then she turned to us and, flat of hand gesturing towards boy, twisted her mouth and narrowed her eyes so that we all could know she was thinking, "And yet, HE can climb the slide?" "Our little actress," Marie said, "our herečka." (Sadly, despite her example of instantaneous cross cultural communication, C did not get into that kindergarten - we're holding our thumbs for the next).

Ultimately, while Will and I might shake our heads and imagine that Caroline suffers a severe case of Paradise Lost syndrome (that classic condition most readers of Milton fall prey to, characterized by guilty admiration for the evilest character in Christiandom), I suspect that C just realizes most bad guys get juicy parts and short lines - just right for a less than chatty actress, with a world of faces at her command.

Brown Bear redux

Did I mention that Caroline is telling her books to us now? She’s been working on this for a bit - first lip syncing as I read to her, then echoing every line or jumping ahead to reach a favorite word or phrase before I get there. Sometimes during the day you can hear her rehearsing: "Do you like my hat? No, I do not like your hat. Good-bye! Good-bye!"

We often read the same book three times in one night. This is not always fun, especially if you and the Cat and the Hat don’t get along so well. So now I say that third time through is Caroline’s turn and hand over the book. Sometimes she’ll go for this, and ramble through the story ad libbing as she turns each page. She’s a perfectionist though and eventually she gets dissastisfied. In the middle of her account she’ll decide it‘s time to sing songs, or do something else more entertaining, or at least less work.

Then we tried Brown Bear. Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr. is a simple story book with beautiful illustrations and a catchy bit of repeated chatter: "(Brightly colored animal), what do you see?" "I see (another brightly colored animal) looking at me." Caroline loved it when she was a little baby, but we hadn't read it for nearly a year when I pulled it out again a few nights ago.

And discovered that the book is great for reading by heart because "what you see" is always the animal on the next page. Brown Bear sees Red Bird and Red Bird see Yellow Duck, and Caroline can easily keep going through blue horse, green frog, and on to gold fish with no problem. This is satisfying.

With Brown Bear, Caroline doesn’t let forgetting her lines phase her. The first time she read almost all the way through with no problems until she reached nearly the last page and realized she had no idea who the lady with glasses might be. She blinked twice, renamed the teacher "Green Shirt," and moved on with a flourish. Finished, she cheered in victory, gave me a high five and ran to the other room to tell Will, "Dada I did it!"

Now at night I ask her to read me Brown Bear, Brown Bear all by herself. She’ll go for it once or twice, but by the third time she’ll tell me, "Okay Mommie, how about a new one, this book looks good too don’t you think?" And I’ll say yes, and stretch out on the bed with my hands behind my head to hear the next rendition of stories from Caroline.

Hello Garfield

Caroline is an affectionate person, to a certain point. At night when I put her to bed she’ll hook her arms around my neck and not let go, coercing me to lie next to her for just a little bit. It is hard to resist that hook, since so often these days she spends her time practicing to be twelve, scowling at me and telling us vigorously to shhh when we say something distasteful to her (as in, just about anything she didn’t think of herself). So the hook works, and she can keep me for that little bit, until her delight turns to wiggles and she starts poking and prodding, or (if she’s feeling particularly silly) licking my glasses. But while she’s physically demonstrative, she’s not much for saying I love you, and has come up with her own version of the last bit of my good night ritual, when I say I love you, and she says hello garfield.

Helloo Garfield.

It took me a week or two to figure out this Garfield business, and it wasn't until tonight, lying beside her while we sang our good night songs and enjoyed the end of a fine weekend, that I realized what had happened. When I said I love you, she used to mumble I luv you or even I guv you. Then one night she switched to I Garfield, then to Hi Garfield. Tonight, perhaps inevitably, she decided on Hello Garfield. As a teenage three year old I guess she thought that even the cool kids couldn’t figure that one out, should she slip up and say it on the playground one day.

Night light

Caroline likes to stay up late. She’s not a morning person, and hates to wake up once sleeping, but falling asleep is hard for her. In the last few months, she’s tried to stretch her bedtime later and later. She’d stay awake playing in her room by the light of her star-shaped night light (star light she calls it), until she tired of her books and ran into our room to demand more milk, or for me to stay awake with her. We tried to be civil and explain it was bed time, we tried ignoring her, we tried time out, but mostly Caroline just got more riled up and stayed awake anyway. Finally, Will said - turn off the star light, it’s as bad as coffee. We did. She got mad at us and another week of mayhem and late nights ensued.

Then, last weekend in Germany, hanging out in a hotel room, I got C ready for sleep and turned out the light. I thought we’d both go to bed, since I knew the light would keep her up. Caroline started asking for star light, the room light, anything to see by. The dark was too much, falling so fast.

I told her I knew a trick, and if she wanted, she could try it too. I said - hold out your hand and start counting, by the time you get to five, you’ll be able to see your fingers. She counted. She saw her hand. We counted to five again and she could see the end of the bed, next she could see the door and the curtains on the other side of the room. She fell asleep a few minutes later. Now at night, before I sing her lullabies, I turn out the light and we watch our hands reappear. She doesn’t try to turn on her star light any more and tonight, she fell asleep at 9:00. Perhaps my nights will reappear too, I’ll wait and see.

Oof, Arf and Ruff: Bedtime tales

Every few nights, when Caroline has settled into bed on time, the lights are out, the songs are sung and I’m not in a rush, I’ll ask, “story?“ C always says yes (anything to keep from going to sleep), and so I tuck her in, stretch out on the floor beside the bed and tell a tale.

Every story starts the same way: “Once upon a time, maybe yesterday, Oof, Arf and Ruff decided to go find their friend Caroline.“

Because she’s still so little, we don’t go far in these stories. Usually the three dogs (Oof, Arf and Ruff are talking dogs, naturally) will meet up with C at the park, or if it's rainy they’ll visit somewhere close by that Caroline knows well. Today they went to the big church a few blocks away, to see if they could hear any bells playing. There they heard a baby crying, and Oof with his ears, Arf with his nose and Ruff standing up as tall as he could stand, found a little one-year-old lost and crying beside the organ. Caroline stepped in to cheer up the baby and hold his hand to guide him back to his mother, who was just around the corner.

Any lines that C has in her story, she likes to say back to me, and when we finish she’ll briefly review our tale. “Baby,“ she said tonight, “Come on, okay, here’s Mommie. Thank you, bye bye.“

Filed under: toddler tales words dogs

Cookies are cool

Caroline and I had our first hanging out together, mother and daughter chilling and contemplating the ceiling, late evening chat last night. We’d spent the last three hours together, C keeping me company in the kitchen while I cooked, then gobbling up the chicken I accidentally caramelized in apple juice and sunflower oil (a happy accident), I keeping her from drowning in the bathtub and pouring out all of Will’s shampoo, entertaining her through toothbrushing & flossing, pajama assembling and milk pouring. Then we read, about fifteen books but especially her current favorite Mem Fox book, Sleepy Bears. That we read twice, singing along to the rhymes.

After that we sang some more, “Jingle Bells,“ “Sleep sleep“ and “Little Birdies“, Caroline drank her milk and then I was going to leave until she said, „Lie this, Mommie, lie this.“ (this = there). So I did, just for a bit, and since Will wasn’t home yet. And we looked up at the ceiling and I hummed a little more and then Caroline raised herself up, hand underneath chin, looked at me seriously and said, „Mommie, cookies are cool.“

I didn’t understand at first what she meant, but she said it several times, and when I understood, I had to agree. Then I gave her an imaginary cookie, took one myself and we lay back and crunched for awhile, until she gave me an apple (apfel she said) and we ate that too and then I gave her a kiss, said night night and left her to sleep.

With children, good and bad days are not hard to tell apart. Yesterday Caroline woke up crying, and she fussed all day. Today she woke up happy and pretty much stayed that way, despite a brief dip into sorrow when her nap ended too early (OH NO I heard from her room as she groaned in disbelief that she was awake). She could only be consoled by watching tv while sitting with my arms wrapped around her just right. I was supposed to be making a salad for dinner tonight, but when she asks me so clearly to hold onto her, I can’t resist.

I’m going to Bratislava tomorrow and I wanted to sing as many songs for her as I could, kiss her on the cheek as many times as I could sneak in. Tonight she went to bed tired after playing with friends all day, but she held onto my hand through the crib bars and asked me to sing for her just one more. Sing “Liddle boydee” she commanded. Sing “Sleep sleep”. She turned her face to look up into mine as I sang. My voice wasn’t very strong as I was singing while bent double over a crib railing, but she didn’t seem to mind, and joined in for both songs until the end, when I said, “night night baby, love you” and she said “wuv you” and turned to sleep.