Snippets

Today I heard Noodle fussing as I was trying to pull together dinner for the kids. Q starts talking to her, and I leaned in to watch. He took her hands and started rocking back and forth with her, singing, "Row Row Row Your Boat" (a game I've played with them). Forgetting the words, he improvised his own as she laughed with delight.

Noodle often laughs on seeing someone she likes- especially Q. As she stood at the stair gate, banging it back and forth, she spotted him at the bottom of the stairs and kept laughing as he climbed all the way up.

The other night I was at a Preschool Forum and heard that at a year children know (can't say, but understand) about 100 words. Contemplating this, we figure Noodle must have 50 plus, right? But which words does she know?

Yesterday we looked at the bargain end of season clothes that J picked up at OshKosh outlets. One had a cat on it and I said, "Aw, a kitty!" Noodle, on my lap, points at Savannah (the mean cat).

We've tried little tests, "Noodle, get the hat!" She picks up the hat. "Noodle, get the book!" She picks up the hat. (The hat is new and exciting.) I'm sure she knows our names, but you couldn't tell by the way she responds to anything other than her own name. I think she knows what, "Come here!" means, but when you have a test subject who responds to a request when she has the whim, well, you get unreliable results.

Q has been genius good lately. He's set aside his acute interest in learning to read for the moment. Imaginative play seems to have taken its place. We listened to the trucks interacting with different voices, a normal Q saying, "Can you get out of the way?" Gruff voice, "No." Tiny voice responds for another truck explaining that he'd have to go around. Today he let me nap while he played trucks, for two hours. He's unreasonably good.