Amazing Adventures of Adagirl

Ada’s birthday is fast approaching. Ada knows it–she just came in and insisted, “Sing the happy birthday to you song!”

As her birthday draws near, my personal philosophy on toys/presents/belongings evolves. I do not want Ada to have a ton of toys. I would rather she have a few really great ones, and use her imagination to use them in a multitude of playing scenarios.

Well, my new thought, is that the best presents for Ada aren’t toys at all! Radical, huh? But one of her favorite presents last Christmas was a set of windchimes I picked up at the dollar store.

For this birthday, David and I are getting her gardening gloves (she was envious of mine), an alphabet puzzle, and (I think) a wooden clock. The clock because she has been pointing out and asking for clocks on the wall. I didn’t want to get a toy or learning clock, but a real one. However, I don’t think a “real” clock will stand up to her attention, so I am looking for a wooden one with hands that can be moved and abused. It should be simple, quiet, and realistic.

I know that Ada would love an umbrella and a pint-sized broom. Her grandparents may have the former for her, and I hope to get her the latter for Christmas (by which time she should have her own room to sweep). I found that Home Depot has one just her size for about $5. It is called a “porch broom” and she didn’t want to put it back.

I’m not against toys as a rule . . . I would love to get her a train set for Christmas. And a new rocking horse (she has outgrown hers). I’d also like to get her legos, or lincoln logs. Art supplies and books are not toys at all, and much appreciated in our house. She loves her mama goat and baby goat very much, and we wouldn’t trade them for the world! Balls are always great, and puzzles. And she sure likes driving her little cars around, and playing with her net and fish in the bath, as well as the duckies and the yellow submarine. It just seems sometimes that toys are condescending. Maybe toy companies try to keep kids from growing up so they have more years to sell them toys . . .

Anyway, my latest thoughts!

I noticed it yesterday. Ada talks in sentences. Sentences are nothing new, but all of a sudden, it seems like it’s all sentences. Did this just happen, or did I just notice?

We’re at a lumber store (yes, that’s the kind of place I hang out with my toddler these days), and Ada says, “Red bucket outside, hanging. Ada’s on the brown mat inside.” And when I describe what she was describing, it is redundant, because she already did. There was a little red bucket hanging on a nail outside the glass doors, which Ada saw from her position sitting on the brown mat (yes, my toddler enjoys sitting on strange floors in front of doors).

David brings me a bowl of noodles and a container of chicken to feed Ada who is on my lap. I open the chicken and Ada says, “No chicken on the noodles.” No chicken? I ask. “Mommy, put away the chicken,” and just in case I was going to sneak it into her noodles in a minute, “Put the lid on the chicken.”

These quotes are from memory, but they’re pretty accurate. For example, she does say is and she does use the. She also uses pronouns as in, “Ada wanna pet Throckmorton. Ada wanna pet her.”

Me is not featuring muchly in her talk, but she is using it in the phrases tell me and show me. She will say, “Show me Ada the popsicle.” Yesterday she picked up the word errand and demanded that I “tell me Ada the errands” again and again. I would list the errands she and I had accomplished, and those we were on our way to do, and she would want to hear them again. Sense of accomplishment, I guess. Today it was post office. “Ada wanna go inside the post office, mommy.”

Complicated ideas, descriptions, and comparisons, she’s got. Pointing to an illustration: “Red and white flag.” Examining a page in a Berenstain Bears book: “They’re playing with beary bubbies; Ada playing with goats.” Disdaining the spoonful of yogurt I am holding out, “Ada wants logurt with chocolate chip on top.” (yes, I feed my daughter chocolate chip yogurt–I tend to treat chocolate as a vitamin). Narrating our progress as we move from shade to full sun on our walk: “Dark, the green trees. Hot!” She uses plurals. Sometimes it’s foot, sometimes it’s feet, and just now it was, “Ada’s got two foots.”

There seems no end to the things she can say. Anything she observes, it seems:
“Daddy’s going outside to work on the house.” or “Daddy’s working on the house.”
“Ada wants to brush the teeth.”
“Take off the blue shoes.” Followed quickly by, “Purple boots!”
“Mommy got the white bag. Ada’s got the purple bag.” Mine was a trash bag, hers a purse.
“Ada wants to touch the fountain!”
“Look out, Ada’s plopping!” I said it once, she says it all the time now.
“Ada wanna make pumpkins at Halloween.”
“It’s dark.”
“Ada hears a tractor.”
“Give that to mommya.”
“Make the protein drink.”
“Ada wanna open the can.”
“Grammy and granddaddy out of town.”
“Hang the windchime up.”
“Ada wanna get the dominoes.”
“Ada wanna summersault on the brown bed.”
“Ada wanna touch the sting-ray at the zoo.”
“Ada wants the other one.”

Ada wants a lot of things. And she can tell you all about it!

I’m a little embarrassed that I didn’t figure out elimination communication on my own–without the internet, library books, the multitude of names, and definitions. But I am glad I found out about it because Elimination Communication, or Infant Potty Training, is really in keeping with attached parenting and unschooling, and mostly because we love it!

Ada will be two years old in a few weeks, so I don’t know that we can still call in Elimination Communication. It might be regular old potty training now. But I’m glad we started when Ada was four months old, and I plan to do it from the start with my next children.

To pick three favorite things about EC . . . 1. it’s hygenic . . . 2. the communication . . . 3. the style of learning.

1. It’s hygenic: instead of using a piece of cloth or plastic to hold all the elimination inside against my baby’s skin and keep it off her clothes and our furniture, elimination communication is good for keeping it off of my baby’s skin and (hopefully) in a receptacle designated for such things!

2. The communication: sure, my two year old is bubbling with conversation, but at four months, it was an amazing feeling to tell my baby that she should pee now (once we were in position), and to have her respond by peeing . . . time and again! I’ve never doubted that she was an intelligent and capable person, but this sort of thing is very rewarding, as communication usually is. Each and every time we pottied, it brought communication, affinity, and reality way up. And, very important to me, it seemed very respectful to her, to give her the opportunity to potty inside of leaving her in a diaper out of cultural habit.

3. The style of learning: like getting dressed, eating breakfast, and going grocery shopping, it’s homeschooling, isn’t it? I love the idea of modeling the routine, and helping my baby to do it herself, until she can really do it by herself–just like spoon feeding. Instead of ignoring the whole subject until pre-school and then trying to teach potty training. With elimination communication there is nothing to teach–just practice to be had.

Ada at 6 months

Ada, 15 months

Ada will have a favorite book for a while, and we read it again and again. After a week or two, another book will catch her fancy and we read that one right through the cover. Right now it is The Berenstain Bears’ New Baby. And the best page of all is one that says: There were all kinds of fun things for a small bear to do and see in Bear Country. And there is a two-page spread featuring a number of fun things. So I read the text, and Ada describes the pictures. Lately her descriptions have become more original and insightful. . .

What picture used to be described as “He’s looking at two fish,” is now described as, “White car–it’s two white eyes,” because, in this picture, there is no separation of the white color between Small Bear’s eyes, and the white shape of his two eyes, complete with two round, black, irises at the bottom, looks like a little white car driving accross Small Bear’s face. The fact that he wears goggles in this picture, further distorts his face.

She still describes, “He’s chasing a frog,” as always, but invariably adds that, “orange tongue falling out,” as she has noticed that Small Bear has a little tongue of concentration sticking out of his mouth.

In reading to herself, Ada now reads parts of the story out loud in English. She has memorized so much of so many books, that she sits down with any one, opens it, and reads the appropriate words. I may never know when she actually starts to read!

She is also learning the authors of her favorite books. She knows Stan and Jan Berenstain, Mercer Meyer, Minarik, and, of course, Dr Seuss, among others. Sometimes she opens our dictionary and reads, “By Dr Seuss.”

After seeing the display of plastic Jack-O-Lanterns for sale at the store, Ada hasn’t stopped talking about making pumpkins at Halloween. Making big pumpkins and little pumpkins! Seeing as Halloween is two months away, she may be telling us her plans for some time. So we found a book at the library about Jack-O-Lantern faces. It is very good, with pictures of great Jack-O-Lanterns. We are really enjoying this one and Ada happily identifies the happy, sad, scary, and funny faces. We haven’t discussed these words before and whether she has just learned the concepts, or just learned the words for them, it’s lots of fun!

No sooner had I written below post on hopping, than Ada set her diligent little mind and soul to plopping. That is, she races from one end of our (now tinier than ever) house to the other and flings herself to the floor, hollering, “Puh-lop!”

She kept this up tonight for a long time while her daddy and I entertained ourselves reading our book.

All this activity makes me realize that I should have a category for . . . what, physical education? The idea makes me scoff, physical education is so inherent to living in a body that the label is redundant. So I supose that answers my dilemna. No new category–it shall be a life lesson. Perhaps I shall put it in ‘natural world’ too for the body is part of science and she certainly is approaching it as such.

And on a beaming-mother tangent, ours is the very most quite a girl ever. So much so a one! We’re madly in love with her.

Ada is studying hopping. And jumping. She does so by commanding her daddy and I to hop, then laughing with two year old delight. Is there anything better? Could there be a more rewarding fitness program?

Ada has ventured her own hops, skips and jumps. Her hop starts on one leg, then gallops accross the room.

A similar method is employed in the study of science, as Ada requests popsicle after popsicle, only to hand each back to me with a demand to “Freeze it, mommy.”

“Are you going to eat it?” Mommy asks suspiciously as she tries to make headway into dinner. “Ada wanna yellow popsicle,” comes the insistant refrain. So, I wipes me hands, and fetch the yellow popsicle and show no surprise when I am immediately instructed to freeze it. Ada likes to pop it back into the plastic popsicle form herself.

What is the similarity in the manner of learning to hop and asking for popsicles? The repetition, I suppose. The fact that both interfere with the straightforward desire a woman has to cook dinner. The undying interest in a subject that the older among us have experienced enough to deem mundane.

Standing in the middle of our construction site of a yard, surrounded by piles of debris, nails, and a network of ditches (each couched between mounds of displaced dirt), Ada had this to say:

Two green trees
In the sky
Birds flying

Yes, Ada started calling our kitty by her proper name yesterday. All of “Throckmorton” though Ada’s version is more similar to Cro’morton, which I find an improvement over yesterday’s Cropmorton. She loves Throckmorton and is thrilled to be yelling her name whenever the kitty shows up. It is not a little alarming.

Today Ada told me, “Ada love you, mommy. Ada love the red sign. Ada love the green sign.” It is a high compliment to be grouped with the red sign–her favorite of all traffic signs. Throckmorton and her name were not forgotten as Ada added, “Ada wanna love Throckmorton.”

Ada likes to offer Throckmorton things, and encourage Throckmorton to do things. Very sweetly, she will thrust her popsicle into Throckmorton’s taken aback nose, insisting, “Have some, kitty.” Similarly she suggests, “Go inside, Throckmorton,” and “jurump, Throckmorton.” Jurump is Ada’s pronounciation of “jump.” She insists that I jump–a little two leg at a time hop–and then insists, “Ada jurump!” and brings one of her legs up and stamps it down. So far her two feet do not leave the ground at once, but as it produces the right wall-shaking thump, it satisfies everybody. Then it is, “Jurump, Mama Goat,” and Ada’s beloved and dreadlocked Mama Goat, held tightly in the right hand, makes a little hop from in the air to a little higher in the air. The only flaw in Mama Goat’s jurump is the quietness, but we figure that practice makes perfect.

We have purchased a year pass to the zoo, which is one of the most valuable things I own! In August and September, this pass will also get us into the Museum of Science and Industry and the Aquarium. We are using it to full advantage.

On Saturday we took grandma and Aunt K to MOSI with us. Ada showed them around Kids In Charge while David and I wandered around Kids In Charge on our own, playing with brain-tease puzzles, making our own stop-motion movie, and trying to figure out how to work the electric car. Ada’s favorite is the game with the floating balls. Science is SO fun!

Friday we took Rachel and Serena to the Aquarium. We were rushing to see the penguins who are not on display, but only come out for specifically scheduled shows. Well, we missed the show, arriving just in time to see two penguins in a wagon being carted away to wherever penguins live. We had a couple of minutes to ogle them and fully enjoyed it, as penguins can be quite disarming. Then we had to content ourselves with a haphazard examination of the other Aquarium occupants: fish, big and small; alligators floating as if frozen in ice; turtles, some paddling, some buried in sand; birds that fly, fish, and swim; sliding otters.

The perennial favorite remains the good old zoo, with Merry-go-round, petting zoo, and all those animals we love! But boy is this pass paying for itself!

The bits that used to be our house had become a towering pile in the yard. Today it is becoming a heap on a truck that others will haul away. Will they use the scraps to build doghouses? Might they build a mighty raft, nay ark, to take them away from the troubles of everyday? Perhaps they will form the foundation of a new railroad track . . .

Ada pet stingrays today, saw manatees (huge presences), bison, a bear . . . in the world of the Merry-go-round (up and down) she rode an elephant, zebra, horse, manatee, and patted one gorilla. In the world of goats, she patted approximately seven goats, several more than once. She washed her hands in the trough provided and I always have to tear her away from that . . . Ada and Serena ran and played in the fountains at the entrance and had a great time. When I stripped off Ada’s swim pants to dress her again in street clothes, she escaped and danced nude in the spray.

Later, while I helped throw concrete rubble into a truck in the yard, Ada shredded several pages of The Little Engine That Could, demonstrating her lack of respect for antiques, and also demonstrating that she can do whatever she wants with her things, because they are hers, afterall. We read an abbreviated version, and now she is in the middle of a well-deserved nap (for naps are deserved by quanitity, not quality, of behavior).