Aria at five

In keeping with the birthday theme - a few words about Aria, who just passed her fifth (!!! how time flies !!! ) birthday.

She's been learning how to cook more things. I've previously talked about how she can make her own mac-n-cheese (except for boiling the water) and pb&j sandwiches. Now she's also learned how to make a tofurkey & cheese sandwich (she likes to spread the mayo & mustard and cut the tofurkey in half), toast with butter and yeast (she puts a LOT of yeast on it), and she even helped Hosanna make the birthday cake.

She has really started to stretch herself physically lately. She goes all over the playground now, climbing up everything with ease; she even wants to try monkey bars, balance beams, and rope ladders now.

She's in a big dinosaur phase now, which is really fun for all of us, because dinosaurs are freakin cool. She knows all about the difference between a brachiosaurus and a diplodocus, and can easily pronounce Compsognathus (and knows its the one that's the size of a chicken). She likes to bury the pieces of her dinosaur skeleton puzzles in the sandbox, then excavate them like an archaeologist. Oh, and she also likes to play the game where she's a T. Rex ("It's not a tyrannosaurus, it's a T. Rex") stomping around the house, growling and making scary noises. Or sometimes she likes to be a baby T. Rex, and have us be the mommy and daddy T. Rex. She's got several dinosaur books and she loves to read all of them over and over and over again.

She has a growing circle of friends that she really likes to play with. She likes all of her cousins, and has especially been enjoying getting a lot of play time with Tobin since he moved out here earlier this summer. She says that Tobin and her friend Autumn are her best friends. Aria and Autumn are like two peas in a pod. When Autumn comes over, they run off and go shrieking all around the house; they play puppet shows together; they play in the back yard; they play games they make up; and so on. When Tobin comes over, they usually make a "couch mess." This involves throwing all the couch cushions all over the living room, or making them up into a big pile that they can jump on, or making a fort (usually involves some parental assistance).

Aria's favorite place to be is still at home, in the living room, where she still loves playing games, drawing on the easel, playing piano, wrestling on the floor, and doing Ring Around the Rosie. But she does like to go to places too. She likes Fairy Tale Town quite a bit, as well as Funderland. She likes going to the library. She likes going to Autumn's house, and to her new friends Will and Shawn's house too. And she likes going to lots of different playgrounds.

Aria's gotten a little bit more used to Audrey being around, and even likes playing with her to a certain extent. Now that Audrey is talking more, Aria's starting to understand that having another kid around all the time might not be all bad. But, she still wishes that she could have more alone time with Mommy, and feels like Audrey gets all the cuddles. She hates that Audrey is constantly getting into her stuff and messing it up. (And really, what big sister doesn't know that complaint?)

She is composing at the piano now. She made up a T. Rex song. It doesn't have words, but it has a consistent melody that she plays the same way every time. The songs she is making up involve two hands. They have bass and melody, and a steady rhythm. One of her songs even involves her beat boxing along with it. She sings sometimes pretty loudly, with a wide vibrato. Her favorite key seems to be D minor.

One night, not too long ago, Aria and I were having a bit of a difficult bedtime. She really wanted Mommy, not me, and I was getting frustrated. Eventually when Hosanna left the room, Aria screamed and started chasing after her. I had to resort to blocking the door, because I just couldn't come up with any other way to let Hosanna get out of the room and take Audrey to bed. Aria cried and cried, and finally sat down in the bathroom as far away from me as she could get. After a little while, I started telling her how I just didn't know what else to do. That I didn't like having to keep her away from Mommy, but that some nights Mommy needs to put Audrey to bed, and that (in so many words) we're stuck with each other. I think I explained this to her a lot better than I'm writing it now, because after a little while, Aria got up, came over, and sat in my lap.

After a little while, it occurred to me what might be bugging her. I asked if she was mad at me for being at work so much. (I've been putting in a lot of hours at CalPERS the past few weeks.) She nodded and said yes. I said I was sad about it, that I didn't like being away so much. That I missed her all the time, and that I wished I could be home with her more. She relaxed a bit, and cuddled me more. Then she started humming a song. It was different than what I've heard her sing before. It was distinctly pentatonic. It went up the pentatonic scale, sort of swam around the upper octave a bit, then dropped back down. I just listened, in rapt attention, because it was a very beautiful melody.

After about thirty seconds, she stopped singing and said to me, "Do you know what that song means?" I said, "No, what?" She answered, "That song means I'm starting to like you more."

Audrey at two

Audrey just passed her two year birthday. I thought I would write a few words on where she is at in development and personality at this milestone.

Her use of language jumped to new heights in just the past month or two. She now regularly uses sentences of ten or more words, and has a very large vocabulary. For example, a couple weeks ago, she bumped her head. Through sobs and tears, she exclaimed: "I was playing on the couch mess, then I fell off the couch mess, and I bumped my head on the couch mess!" (Then, when I said, sympathetically, "Oh, you bumped your head?" she threw back her head, closed her eyes, and wailed "YEAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!" This is a signature move. )

She doesn't seem to have any confusion about pronouns like I / me / your / her / his / etc. She switches back and forth among them with ease, and usually gets them right. For example, just now, she was trying to push Hosanna out of a chair, and she kept saying "That's MY chair, Mommy!" Hosanna said, "This is your chair?" Audrey responded, "Yeah, it's MINE." This has been true for a few months. It never really seemed to be an issue for her.

She also uses possessives - for example, the other day, I was putting her in the car, and accidentally put her into the wrong car seat. She looked down and around for a second, then exclaimed "I'm in Aria's seat!"

Her pronunciation is still about normal for her age, even if her grasp of language is pretty far ahead. She sometimes gets extremely frustrated when she's trying to say something complicated and we just can't understand her. The person who seems to understand Audrey the best is Aria, so we frequently ask her to translate.

She has developed a kind of sing-song, questioning manner, too. She says things with this lilt to them. Swear to God, she sounds like a kid from a TV commercial or something. Example, about a month ago, Aria bonked her head or something and was crying up a storm. Audrey came in the room and said "Aria? You hurt?" in this gentle, sing-songy way. Then, just a few days ago, when I was leaving to go to work, she said "Bye, Daddy. I love you, Daddy." It melted my heart.

Lest you think she's all sugar and spice now, I'll hasten to note that she's still enormously active, and usually, LOUD. Most days, she wakes up bright and early - around 7 a.m. - and within a few minutes, chirps (or shouts) "I wanna go to the bay-bound (playground)!" She loves yelling. LOVES yelling. She likes running around. She wants to climb EVERYTHING. She still gives us heart palpations at the playground when she climbs up the highest thing and then dangles herself off it ("Look at ME, Daddy!"), although thankfully, she's developed at least a small sense of fear recently. And her absolutely favorite thing in the world is to SWING. She wants to swing and swing and swing and swing and swing and swing. All day, every day, "I WANNA SWING!!!!!!!!!"

Outside of physical activity, her favorite things to do are 1) Read books, and 2) do puzzles. At least two or three times a day, she comes over to her book shelf, pulls out every book one by one, and flips through the pages like a hurricane. It's like she can't get them fast enough, can't get enough of them. "Read this to me, Mommy!" "Read this to me, Daddy!" (Then, if you don't answer quickly enough, "READ THIS TO ME DADDY!!!!!!!!!!!") Her favorite books are still mostly board books, like the Sesame Street letter books - Natasha's Nap or C is for Cookie, etc. She loved a book we got from the library called Higher, Higher, about a little girl on a swing. She also loves We're Going on a Lion Hunt.

We have numerous wooden puzzles in the house, and Audrey can do any of them easily. The most complicated is a wooden U.S. map puzzle. Audrey can do the whole puzzle by herself, and knows most of the names of the states. If you say, for example, "Where's Missouri?" she can pull it out of the pile, say "Here's Missouri!" and put it into the map. If she doesn't know the name of one, she'll hold it up to you and say "What's this?" When you answer, say, "South Dakota," she responds "Oh. South Dakota." Then a couple times later, she'll remember it.

Audrey still nurses frequently, including at least once in the middle of the night. She's so active that it can drive Hosanna crazy. She's nursing but flopping around all over the place, little hands prying everywhere: poking Hosanna's tummy, pulling on her moles, jabbing her belly button, pinching her arms, etc.

Audrey likes to play the piano some. For a little while, she was making up a song on the piano called "Rubber, Rubber" (after the name of our cat). She likes to sing little songs. She knows the alphabet song, and sings it all the time. She likes to sing Ring Around the Rosies (and do the whole running around / falling down thing too), and the Itsy Bitsy Spider.