We recently spent a lovely two weeks in Oregon with my family. Esther really enjoyed being around her extended family. She was particularly enamored of my mom, and wanted Grandma to do everything that I normally do (including accompanying Esther to the bathroom!). They enjoyed reading books, playing games, and cutting up scrap paper together, among other things. And one memorable day Grandma let Esther be the chief chef of macaroni and cheese, which Esther is still talking about! At the end of our visit my mom gave Esther a (totally unofficial) IQ test, just for fun. (Yes, it is possible to have fun with IQ tests.) Esther's aggregate score wasn't anything dramatic, but she did very well on the expressive language section. That didn't really surprise anybody--during the course of our two weeks there she correctly and spontaneously used words like protect, habitat and episode (of a TV program). My mom commented, "She's her mother's daughter!"
While my mom's style of having fun with a child is very educational, my brother had a stated goal of "corrupting" his niece while we were there. He endeared himself to her in a big way by letting her garden with him, use his vise, and sit in his beloved truck while he washed it. (There were times when "Unta Nafan" rose even higher on her list of favorite people than "Danma"!) And by the end of the visit he had her begging to watch "Woewee Hoddy" (aka Laurel and Hardy) and exclaiming "meeeeeat!" (his own favorite quirky expression) when pleased by something. More than two weeks after coming home, she is still talking about Laurel and Hardy and...well, let's just say when we gave her a favorite snack recently (I forget what it was, but I'll use grapes as an example), she exclaimed, "Grapes! Meeeeeeeat!" I think the corruption worked. Sigh.
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