The evolution of Rugga Guggan

Sometime in the spring, Esther started randomly chattering about Beebee Bobbi, or occasionally Robbi Bobbi.  I couldn't make much out of it, but it sounded occasionally like she was talking about a person.  Over our Memorial Day trip to my grandmother's house, it became clear: Beebee Bobbi was her imaginary friend!  I learned that Beebee Bobbi was small (small enough to climb on the curtains, and be carried in Esther's cupped hands) and was a girl.

Esther continued to talk about Beebee Bobbi a lot all summer, occasionally changing her name.  Sometimes she was Robbi Bobbi, then Robba Bobba, then Rugga Gugga, and now for the last few months she has been Rugga Guggan.  The name hasn't changed in a while, so maybe this one will stick.

Esther plays with Rugga Guggan a lot on some days, usually days which she has spent with only me for company, but pretty much ignores her on days when she gets a lot of socialization elsewhere.  I don't think she has yet asked for extra treats to give Rugga Guggan, but has been known to share food with her.  She has also blamed her for messes ("Rugga Guggan did that!"), for disobedience ("But Rugga Guggan doesn't want me to do it!") and for slowness ("I'm waiting for Rugga Guggan!")  Esther takes great delight in scolding Rugga Guggan when she breaks house rules.  Sometimes she carries her around in her hands.  Once she had a fight with her and came complaining to me about it.  I must say, I anticipate having to deal with sibling rivalry someday, but I never expected to find myself arbitrating a quarrel with an imaginary friend!  Then again, this is the same child who the other day dropped her imaginary ticket out of her imaginary pocket and lost it.  We are not lacking for imagination around here!

vignettes

If Esther doesn't decide to become a scientist or a physician, she might have a great career ahead of her as an electrician.  Seriously!  She's fascinated with all things mechanical, and seems to have a real knack for learning from observation.  We have to be careful how much access she has to tools!  Before we moved, Tim was putting the lock back on our bathroom door (we had removed it for fear of her locking herself in), and found when he finished that she was well on her way to removing the doorknob from another door.  He asked her how she managed to get the screw loose and she blithely replied, "lefty loosey, righty tighty!"

We've finally figured out why Esther thinks that Tim's classes involve soda pop.  It's because of the "fizz" in "physics."

The last time we visited my grandma, her church was having a child baptized, and so all the children in children's church were brought in to watch.  Afterwards, Esther announced to me, "I went to a Baptist church today."

As we were leaving my grandma's hometown, Esther asked, out of the blue, "Is that an evil one?"  Startled (I didn't even know she knew the word evil!), I asked, "an evil what?"  "An evil church," Esther replied, pointing to a church logo of a cross with a flame (representing the Holy Spirit) curved around it.  I asked why she thought it might be evil and she explained, "Because it has fire."  There are times I really wish I knew what was going on in that little head!

On Tuesday when Esther came home from daycare, she reported to me that one of the little boys had asked her if she was his buddy and she had told him, "I'm not your buddy, I'm my Mama's buddy!"  A little while later she asked me, "Are you my buddy, Mama?"  I told her that I sure was, and she added, "You keep me safe from cars in the street."

For Esther's first week of AWANA, she was supposed to learn a motto and three Bible verses.  She has a great memory, but wasn't really keen on memorizing something that was initiated by me.  One of her verses was "God loved us and sent his son, 1John 4:10."  I would periodically ask her to say her verses, giving her the first word of each.  At one point she evidently got tired of that, because she recited, in a tone of long-suffering, "God loved us, and so on."

anthropomorphism

Last week Esther went on a jag of waking up waaaaay too early.  On one such morning I was up with her, letting Tim get some more sleep.  We heard a flock of geese fly low overhead, honking as they went.  Esther yelled at the top of her lungs, "Geese!  Be twiet!  My Daddy's still sweeping!"  (He had managed to sleep through the geese, but was not so successful sleeping through his daughter's admonition.)

Shortly before dinner tonight, Esther was dispatched, much against her will, to pick up some potato chips that she had spilled on the floor.  I overheard her asking them solicitously, "Chips?  You want to stay on the floor?"

Sunday School, revisited

I seem to have confused several people with my previous post on this topic, and on re-reading it, I can see why! What can I say: I wrote it late at night!

To set the record straight, I think children's programming in churches is valuable.  Kids are not mini adults; they are more active, more impulsive, concrete thinkers, and hands-on learners.  So if kids are going to get much out of a religious experience, whether it's designed just for children or for all ages, it needs to be designed to take advantage of the characteristics they have.  My grandma also made an excellent point that children whose families don't go to church are more likely to come to (and benefit from) a Sunday School or a children's church rather than an adult-oriented service.

What I intended to object to were the following:

1.  Children and youth being completely segregated from adults, so that they never see people of other ages, developmental stages and lengths of spiritual experience interacting with God.  I cannot tell you how much I've learned about God and faith through interacting with others who were at different stages than I was.  This was true of me as a child and teen watching adults, but it's still true of me as an adult being with children and young people.  We of different ages need each other to be the whole body of Christ.

2.  Sunday School curricula that focus on information but neglect engagement.  It's great for kids to know what's inside the Bible, but knowledge alone doesn't lead to transformation.  (This is an issue for adults, too!) In addition to learning the stories, we need to learn how to wrestle with and listen to the God who stars in the stories, and we need to learn how to let the stories shed light on our daily lives.  A good teacher will make space for this regardless of how the curriculum is written, but it would be better to have curriculum written in such a way that the target outcome is not to have kids able to tell you facts about what they learned today (as if it were a math or spelling lesson) but to have them come out having engaged with God in some way, and able to continue to engage during the rest of the week.  (I am not saying Sunday schools should trade Bible stories for something else--that would be a terrible loss!--but that children should be led to interact with stories in such a way that they don't just learn the information contained in them, but develop a way of relating to the Bible, and to God, that will follow them into adulthood.)

The church we visited on Sunday was opposite in many ways from the previous week--large, lots of children and children's programming completely separate from "big church" (although I was pleased to see that children seemed to be welcome in the service if their parents chose to bring them in), good expository sermon which made a rather difficult passage in Romans clearer to me than it has been in the past, and a keen awareness of God's work in the rest of the world.  I liked it, but I don't know that we're going to settle there.  However, I'm thinking about putting Esther in their AWANA program (Bible memorization program for little ones) for this semester.  I think she would love it, and it will give her some continuity in the people she sees each week until we find a church home.

Went hiking today

Life according to Esther

As you may have noticed, I like to write down Esther's latest funny sayings from time to time, so I won't forget them.  And why not share them while I'm at it?  So here is the latest installment.

In addition to "wacket jellos," Esther sometimes gets other beginning consonants switched.  My favorite is "runny babbit" (bunny rabbit).

Esther is turning out to be not much of a milk drinker, like her mommy.  :-(  One day recently I gave her a cup of milk at both breakfast and lunch, only to throw it away several hours later when I discovered it still untouched at her place.  However, she will usually drink chocolate milk.  (I also push other sources of dairy and calcium.)  So the other day I asked her whether she wanted chocolate milk or plain milk, and she said she wanted plain milk.  I was a little dubious, so I asked her again and got the same answer.  When I brought her the milk, she looked into her cup, looked up with an injured expression, and said, "But I thought you were going to give me chocolate milk!"

Esther for a while was begging us every few hours for a "jumpoline."  I thought at first that it was a cute neologism, but apparently there is such a product, and she enjoyed the use of one at her gymastics class.  We would like to buy her some jumping apparatus, but want to make sure it is safe, durable (reviews of the jumpoline have left me with some concerns in this category), and doesn't violate the terms of our homeowners insurance.  Meanwhile, she has mostly given up bugging us about it, but yesterday she jumped up in the middle of her Donut Hole video for the express purpose of coming and telling me, "I'm waiting so patiently for my jumpoline."  So I guess the idea has not died!

Today we opened our new bank account.  The woman who walked us through this process was lovely with Esther, getting her a coloring book, finding official-looking pieces of paper for her to write on, and being very patient with her wiggles.  Towards the end of the process, this woman printed out some information about our account and highlighted key facts as she went over it with us.  So then Esther wanted to use her highlighter to write on the "account number" (a packet of general bank information, I think) that this woman had given her.  The woman said it was just fine with her if it was okay with us, and I said that Esther sometimes uses our highlighters at home.  At which point Esther piped up, "I usually do things that my mommy and daddy don't let me do."

We made it!

Backing up a bit (by nearly three weeks, to be precise), we are in our new house!  We are renting right now, but some of the repairs required by the mortgage appraiser have been already taken care of, and the rest should take place next week, so we are hoping to close in early September.  Meanwhile, it is good to feel a little settled.  Mind you, there are still stacks of unpacked boxes in nearly every room of the house, including the living room and kitchen.  But we can eat, sleep, clothe ourselves and attend to personal hygiene without having to spend 15 minutes of every thirty hunting for that one crucial item that we distinctly remember seeing within the last few hours but can't for the life of us remember where.  Tim has begun classes, and thinks it is going to be a fun semester.  I am loving watching him have a job that he is excited about!  Esther has started to daycare two mornings a week.  The first time she was pretty clingy when I dropped her off, and apparently kept her blankie with her all morning.  Today (her second day) she seems to feel more at ease.  I've stayed on campus this week so I can be immediately available if she needs me, but eventually I will stay home on her daycare days and have four glorious hours all to myself!  Don't worry, I won't have any trouble filling them.  I've also started volunteering in the International student office, although I'm not sure what form that will take over time.  Right now I'm tutoring a Bulgarian student on the TOEFL.

Anyway, here are some highlights from our move.

Some "oops" moments:
--We packed the DVD player up with a library CD still inside it.
--When we drove down the first time, using a van borrowed from a friend, we tied Esther's (disassembled) crib up on top to give us extra space.  Our first evening in the house, in the process of unpacking the van, we untied it.  Tim started, and then I finished while he carried some things inside.  When I finished, Esther was sitting on the tailgate of the van.  I wasn't sure how heavy the crib sides were and didn't want to risk dropping them on her, so I left them for later.  A little while after that, while driving to the grocery store, we heard scraping sounds.  We asked each other, "What was that noise?"  We couldn't see anything moving in the back of the van, but figured that the noise must come from some of our stuff shifting around.  A little while later we heard even louder scraping noises...and looked behind us to see one of her crib sides go sailing into the road!  Thankfully it did not land on another car or cause an accident.  Tim pulled the van over onto the shoulder and went running back to retrieve it before it got run over.  We pulled all the parts of the crib off the roof, found a place to shove them in the van, and went on to the store, feeling sheepish.  I've heard of people forgetting things on the roof of their car before, but not an entire crib!
--In our first week in the house we managed to break not one but two of the knick-knacks the owner had left behind!  (And neither incident was Esther's fault!)  We were relieved to find out that the owner didn't want them and had had no intention of taking them.  He left a number of things in the house for us, some more useful than others, but we will enjoy the useful and beautiful ones and take the rest to the Salvation Army.  Our first couple of days there we particularly appreciated that he had left hand soap and dish soap!

Things we like about the house:
--We love our back deck!  It is a lovely place to eat a snack or meal, and we can see stars!  On one of the nights of the Perseid meteor shower Tim and I stood out there for a while craning our neck at the sky and saw a blazing shooting star, by far the biggest and brightest I've ever seen!
--We love not having any neighbor under us to complain about Esther making noise during the day (our previous neighbor worked night shift).  Esther has run and jumped and bounced loud balls to her hearts content.  Every once in a while she'll comment, "There's nobody downstairs."  (We haven't quite escaped the issue of neighbor noise, however--some kids a few houses down have this thing for setting off firecrackers right around Esther's bedtime.  At least they're not too loud.)
--We love how it cools down at nights.  Most nights we sleep with the windows open and the fan going, and we can hear cicadas!
--We love all the space.  And multiple bathrooms!  No more taking a shower with the door unlocked in case a family member needs to get in to use the toilet.
--Our long, flat driveway is perfect for sidewalk chalk and scooter riding.

Things we don't like about the house:
--All that space?  There are more places to lose things.  Esther tends to take off her sandals and put down her blankie in the most random places, and then get upset when she can't find them.  And there are a lot of times I've been in a bathroom and wanted some bathroom item only to realize that it's in a different bathroom.

--We've found a few pests--a trio of large ants exploring the bedroom, a carpenter bee boring a hole in one of the supports for the railing on our deck, and most importantly, two nests of yellow jackets (Esther referred to them last night as yacket jellos) in the back yard!  The guy that we are currently paying to mow our lawn discovered one nest "the hard way" (multiple stings on his face,  ouch!) when he was mowing on behalf of the house's owner earlier this summer.  He discovered the second one (though without getting stung this time) while mowing for us on Saturday.  I read up on exterminating them, but the consensus of the articles seemed to be that  if you discover them this late in the season you run a higher risk of getting stung while removing them (because the nests are largest and most active in late summer and early fall) and have less time to wait before the first frost will do the dirty work for you, so you might as well leave them alone.  So that is what we're going to do, but in the meantime, we're staying out of the back yard!  Sometimes in the late morning I can see yellow jackets shooting up into the sky just beyond our porch.  Pretty, but I would enjoy the sight more if I didn't know what they were!  (Once the wasps are dead, we're going to fill in the holes with dirt and rocks so we don't get them again next summer.)

--Utility bills--they were included in our rent in our old apartment, so having to pay them ourselves is giving us sticker shock!  That's another good reason not to run our air conditioning.

--While Esther can get way more active inside the house than formerly, I miss having  a playground or park within walking distance.  There aren't even sidewalks  for a few blocks around us, although there is so little traffic that it's safe enough to walk, even with Esther.  We walked to the library a couple of weeks ago and that was fine.

Serendipity

--The best thing about our new house is our new neighbors!  Within a few days of us being there, no less than four people came over to introduce themselves and tell us to be sure to knock on their door if we needed any help with anything.  One of them even brought a chocolate cake!  We are also really enjoying our Lebanese neighbors next-door, whom we had met earlier.  Their little girl is about a year and a half younger than Esther, so it will be a while before they can really play together, but they are fascinated with each other and we have visited back and forth several times.

--The first Sunday we were at our new home, as I was standing outside directing movers, I heard church bells chime the time, followed by a lovely rendition of several hymns!  It was a  moment of oasis in a hectic day.  I have since discovered that the chimes are played every day (or nearly every day) a little after 9 and a little after 5.  I usually can't hear them at all from inside, and can't always hear them well even outside, but I love it when I do!

--I love keeping up on the weather, and two of the things the owner left behind were an indoor/outdoor temperature gauge (sometime I have long been ambitious to own!), and in the front yard, a darling little bunny sculpture clasping a rain gauge in his arms!  I have been enjoying checking the rain gauge, and Esther likes to water the plants with it (never mind that if there's been enough rain to put water in it, the plants are already sopping wet).