Bon Apetite

A long video of Charlotte feeding her doll some plastic food.  The close observer will note the elephant card on the table, which is a thank you card from Charlotte's cousin Sophia.  She is a big fan of the letters and the pictures and has colored the card several times.  A thank you card as a gift that keeps on giving.  Who knew?  Thank you for the thank you card, Sophia!

Conversation with Charlotte #412382

Tonight we were choosing books for bedtime.  She had her heart set on The Little Engine That Could which is kind of a narrow book and splits its time upstairs and downstairs.  Not only does this make it hard to find but hard to keep track of.  Really Charlotte?  Out of all the books you had to pick one of the narrowest and transient books you have.  So Charlotte and I spent a few minutes looking for the book.   We couldn't find it, but Charlotte is learning a little too quickly how I like to communicate with Emily at bedtime when Charlotte and I are upstairs and Emily is downstairs.

Me: I'm not even sure the book is up here Charlotte.  It might be downstairs.

Charlotte (runs to the doorway and shouts down the stairs): EM! HELP! BOOK!

Looks like we need to introduce the "whoever does the talking does the walking rule" around Parker-Nawrocki household... starting with me.

Conversation with Charlotte #91

Charlotte tonight, finishing off the opening page to Chicka Chicka ABC for me while we read it as one of her bedtime books.

Me: A told B and B told C, "I'll meet you at the top of the coconut tree."

Charlotte: A... B.... Charlotte.

Charlotte Gets Involved In Neighborhood Debate

A few weeks ago, to much fanfare, a new restaurant opened in our neighborhood, The Blue Door.  I'm excited but have yet to go because part of the Blue Door experience (there is one in St. Paul) is waiting for 45 minutes for your table.  Great for having a beer and catching up with your friend  while you wait for a table, not so great for taking your toddler out for a quick bite.

So while I haven't been yet, I am no stranger to the debate it has sparked among Longfellow residents.  The restaurant is surrounded by houses and no business is within a block or two, so the residents nearby are griping about having a bar and restaurant next to their house and a school.  There is no parking lot yet the Blue Door was able to skirt this regulation, to the dismay of those who live on the block and will have to contend with cars parking on their block.  The owner of the nearby wine bar and coffee shop has also lobbied against the Blue Door coming to Longfellow.

But beer and hamburgers won out.  The place is crazy popular.  A new four way stop sign is now by the restaurant.  And suddenly there is a stretch of 42nd Avenue packed with parked cars.

On Saturday, Charlotte and I were driving down 42nd around lunchtime and she was chattering away about produce and then saying, "I think so.... I don't think so.... I think so.... I don't think so."  As an aside, I had to keep from laughing because the whole "I don't think so" bit Charlotte was saying reminded me of Fred Willard from the only funny scene from A Mighty Wind.

But I digress.

Charlotte was mid-"I don't think so" when we drove by the Blue Door and she burst out, "Lots and lots of cars!  So many cars!  Beep beep!  So many cars!"

Count Charlotte among the Longfellow residents who thinks the Blue Door is bringing too much unwanted traffic and street parking to our quiet neighborhood.  Meanwhile I am stoked the Blue Door is here.  I assume this is the only time Charlotte and I will fail to see eye to eye on anything, ever again.

Beginning of an Era

Charlotte has always enjoyed dolls and stuffed animals during her waking hours.  But once it is time for nap or bedtime, she has made it clear her world and the Toy Story world are to remain separate.  She wants all dolls and stuffed animals in her doll crib (sometimes the doll crib is so full of dolls and animals, it looks a lot her mom and dad's bed when the animals all climb on the bed for the night).  Meanwhile, her crib is reserved for herself.

But my mom sent Charlotte a Valentine's Day gift this week and everything has changed.  Suze sent Charlotte a doll bottle, complete with fake milk and a very cute book about a boy and his teddy bear.













Since receiving the bottle and book, Charlotte and the bottle and a teddy bear are never far apart and often attached, although she does choose between three bears.  In the book the boy and the bear do all sorts of things together and love each other.  And now Charlotte can be seen doing the same thing, reading to a bear, walking around with a bear, playing hide and seek/peek-a-boo, and now eating with or feeding a bear.  Today she requested that we take a bear, and bottle, to music class.  I've always found it so unique that Charlotte had this division with her stuffed animals and dolls.  They only sometimes left the house and never were allowed in her crib.  All of that has changed now, and, just like when I was a kid, her bear (or one of three bears, to be accurate) is rarely far from her, for now.  The gifts were perfect, Mom, and are quickly a big part of her day.

The bear joins Charlotte for her daily nap...












...and the bear and bottle are present for bedtime.

Family Fun Night

Conversations with Charlotte #123789, #12, #839, #5621, #21189, #512123, #318...

It's been, oh I don't know, 30 years since I wrote a computer program.  But I still have some mad BASIC skills from my Vic-20, TRS-80, and Apple II days.  Everyday I pick up Charlotte from daycare and we walk towards the car, the same conversation will inevitably break out.  It is equally predictable, repetitive, and basic.  So basic a ten year old with a Commodore 64 could write a program for it.  Today I was curious how often the back and forth would go before Charlotte would change the subject.  The answer is twelve.  Around eight or nine I began to fear it would be an endless loop.

10 PRINT "Charlotte: HI DADDY"

20 PRINT "Charlotte: THAT A" [whatever you see right in front of Charlotte]

30 IF ACTION = WALKING TOWARDS DADDY'S CAR THEN GOTO 50

40 GOTO 20

50 a = 1

60 PRINT "Charlotte: THAT A CHARLOTTE'S CAR"

70 PRINT "Michael: IT'S ACTUALLY DADDY'S CAR."

80 a = a+1

90 IF a = 12 THEN GOTO 110

100 GOTO 60

110 PRINT "Charlotte: DADDY HAVE A HAT ON."

120 PRINT "Charlotte: DADDY HAVE A GLASSES ON."

130 END

Crappy Unimaginative Book Spark Imagination In Child

A few months ago the art teacher at work came by my office and asked me for some manila folders.  I don't know how life is for teachers in other schools, but we pretty much have to buy all of our own supplies aside from computers and paper for copying and printing.  So it is a bigger favor than you'd expect for me to give her a stack manila folders.  I gave her a stack in the name of a happy workplace and as a thank you, the next day, she gave me a stack of Hello Kitty books for Charlotte.  And by "gave me," I mean unloaded on me yet another stack of random crap she has and is trying to get rid of.  Pretty good trade: I'll give you the trash I was about to take out for those folders you'll eventually need and bought with your own time and money.

So I brought the books home and didn't think much of it until.... Charlotte found them and fell in love with them.... and Emily and I quickly hated them.  I can allow for the text in the book to be horrible because the books are meant for emerging readers.  Like Emily says, a computer probably wrote them.  But a computer also drew them.  It is the crappy artwork that drives me batty.  And the art teacher gave me the bleeping books.  Irony.













Alas, the books remain.  And Charlotte continues to loop back to them and want to look at them nonstop for two or three days straight before moving on to the next step in her book cycle.  This morning, Emily and Charlotte read the timeless classic Hide-and-Seek six times while I was out running.  It is probably no coincidence she has insisted on wearing her Hello Kitty boots for the rest of the day.

Later Charlotte and I went to Seward Co-op which is still her favorite place on earth.  When we got home, Pancho wanted to go outside and Charlotte did not want to come inside.  So I left the two of them out there while I put the groceries away.  Five minutes later, Pancho and Charlotte were on the deck together.  I wanted to show how one of them could self-entertain and the other was co-dependent. I had this whole post in mind about dogs, toddlers, and how seeing the two of them together made me miss Adria.  We used to debate at what age a toddler becomes smarter than Pancho.  Anytime one of her grandchildren would exhibit a new skill she would ask me in a very self-assured tone, "So, now who is smarter?"  And I'd always find a way to show how Pancho was still smarter.  To see Charlotte talking away, playing independently, and co-dependent Pancho doing nothing but starting at the door, I was going to give a tip of the hat to Adria.  I was going to use the video to acknowledge that it is clear that Charlotte has surpassed Pancho's intelligence across the board.  It's okay Pancho, you're still smarter than the cats.

But then around 20 seconds into the video, something kind of funny happened.  Charlotte had no idea I was filming her.  I could here her saying  "Hide and seek.  Hide and seek" (I am not sure if this is audible in the clip below) before poking her head from one side of the support beam on the deck to the other, as if it were a tree, and saying "It is me."  The close observer will note that this is exactly what the stupid dog (and all the other stupid Hello Kitty friends) is doing in Hide and Seek.  This is the first time I've seen her act out a scene from a book.

And so the Hello Kitty books remain in our library.

Cripes.

Conversation with Charlotte #59

Charlotte's book-of-the-moment for about two days was If You Give a Moose a Muffin. We read as part of her bedtime routine three nights ago and she asked for it in the morning.  She will often ask for the book we read the night before.

Once Charlotte was out of her crib she was milling about her room, still holding the book.  So we started talking about it.   We talked about how if you give a moose a muffin, he will indeed eat it.  And then at some point I told Charlotte "If you give a moose a muffin it will ask you to do a zillion things before finally doing the thing you wanted it to do in the first place.  Kind of like asking a two year old to do something.  What do you think?  If you give a Charlotte a muffin..."

So she just looked at me for a second or two, looked down at the the book, and said, "If give a moose a muffin.... eat it."

And that there is a language milestone.  Charlotte's first complex sentence.  She doesn't get full credit because, as we say in the industry, she required delayed imitation and open-ended sentence modeling to get there.  But I'll take it.  If you give a Charlotte an open-ended sentence, she'll give you a complex albeit telegraphic sentence.