this kid says the darndest things

And the more she talks, the funnier it gets!

An old funny I forgot to mention happened when we were visiting Grandma Pack last May. Esther was doing something inappropriate with her spoon, so I threatened to take it away. She frowned at me and said, "You have YOUR OWN!"

One day Esther told me, "Daddy go to work. I not go to work. I go to work five. [i.e., I'll go to work when I'm five years old.]" I've told her that she'll be big enough to go to school when she's five, so I think she thinks that's the age of being all grown up! (Another time when we were discussing Tim's work I told her that I don't go to work because my work is to take care of her. She gave me a funny look and reminded me, "Daddy takes care of me too!")

For a while, she was very into role-playing. She would stand in the corner outside our door where we put the trash before taking it out and proclaim, "I'm a garbage!" Or, belly-flopping onto our bed, "I'm a dolphin!" Tim's favorite was, "I'm a thunderstorm!" (said as she pummeled him and made thundering noises). Her favorite was, "I'm a frozen blueberry"--I pretended to shiver because she was making me so cold, which she thought was hilarious, so she played at being a frozen blueberry several times thereafter.

One day we happened to glance out the window and saw a man in our swimming pool area (at this point the pool was covered over for the season and the area hadn't been used for a while). So we watched him for a while, speculating on what "the guy" might be doing, and why. In the middle of the conversation, Esther announced, "I'm not a guy. I'm a woman!" Then last night Tim was trying on a suit and Esther asked him about it, so he explained that this was fancy clothes for a man. She asked, "Are you a man?"

The other day Esther was playing around with a flashlight. She instructed me to open my mouth and say "Ah," explaining, "I wanna look at your lungs."

I have been working with Esther on not demanding things in a whiny voice. So when she whines for something, I will tell her, "I might give it to you if you ask in a nice voice." She doesn't entirely grasp the point of this exercise...her usual response is to say (in a much more pleasant tone), "nice voice!" She also, when instructed to ask for permission before doing something, will say, "mission?"

I've mentioned before that Esther tends to associate words based on sound. Recently in the grocery store she asked me if I needed to buy "those kneepads"--meaning Depends, which she thought were sanitary napkins, aka pads! And last night when Tim told her that he loved her, she replied, "I love you, too! Three, four, five, six, seven!"

Last week Esther wanted a turn at saying good-night prayers, but she wasn't quite sure how to get started. I asked her, "What do you want to tell God thank-you for?" Thus encouraged, she launched into something along the lines of the following: "Dear God, thank you for people, and Sunrise [the assisted living center we visit], and kids, and stuff, and people, and Ji Ayi [a family friend], and Sunrise, and stuff, and toys, and...NOSES [touching mine], and people, and stuff...Jesus, AMEN!"

snow days!

No, we're not having a snow day right now (although we are supposed to have a day of "wintry mix" tomorrow--sounds yucky!), but we had so much fun with snow before Christmas that I thought it was high time to post some cute pictures.

First, we had a snowfall of several inches. Or at any rate, only several inches stuck. It snowed hard all day, and I think we would have gotten some impressive accumulation if the temperatures hadn't been well above freezing. But the not-too-frigid temperatures made it more pleasant for playing in.

You can tell from Esther's face what she thinks of snow!

Later in the day, Esther had a fabulous time playing out back with some big kids who were kind enough to include her in their antics. Here she has just finished tasting the snow.

Shortly before Christmas, we got a rare deep snow. It was the most snow (16 inches!) that has fallen in the area since the big snow we experienced the winter we moved to Maryland for the first time, seven years ago now, and it was an all-time record for the area for December. Last year Esther wasn't such a fan of deep snow because she couldn't walk well in it, but this year she LOVED it!

Look, Ma, it's higher than my knees!

This is what our car looked like when the snow stopped. Although I wouldn't want to deal with it on a regular basis, there is definitely camaraderie involved in mass car unburying, and it was fun to work alongside our neighbors as we all dug out.

Esther was VERY proud of "her" shovel!

Taking a break on a pile of freshly shoveled snow.

another leap

It's just amazing to me how suddenly a child can move forward into another stage of development! Like any good toddler, Esther has been scribbling for some time (preferring pens to crayons), but just recently she has made the leap to meaning something by the marks she makes.

First, it was writing. She has heard me spell out the first part of our last name many times when I was picking something up at the pharmacy. Starting a month or so ago, she has frequently informed us that she was going to write those letters, and then she would bend over her paper and make small, careful scribbles that, with a little imagination, could look like writing.

Then over our Christmas vacation she started drawing pictures of objects--like her aunt's two "wabwadoes" (labradors)! Again, no one would ever guess the content of the pictures if they weren't told, but Esther really did seem to be making a representational drawing, looking up at the labradors to observe them and then looking down at her paper to draw some more. And on Sunday she drew a "rainbow" (an arched line) and a "smiley face" (a circle) that were actually recognizable once she pointed them out.

Yesterday we were outside, braving the cold to get a little active playtime, and had a conversation something along the following lines:

Esther: Sky's covered up!

Mommy: Yes, there are a lot of clouds covering the sky.

Esther: Whales.

Mommy: You mean the clouds look like whales?

Esther: Swimming in the water!

Mommy: You're right, they do kind of look like whales!

The clouds were gray and the sky, what of it we could see, was bright blue, and the cloud right above us really did look vaguely like a whale in a blue ocean. But noticing that is a sort of symbolic thinking that I've never observed in Esther before. My little girl is developing a big imagination!

Finally, I was impressed this morning when she made a clearly recognizable smiley face in her playdough. The playdough at that point was a flattened circle, and she used her toy rolling pin to poke holes for the eyes, mouth and nose. It was her own idea, and she told me what she was doing as she did it. I think there's going to be a lot more interesting artwork happening around here in the near future!