What's New Wednesday: Chatter

If you have been around here for very long, there's a good chance you're aware of our car seat woes. Annabelle despises the thing and always has. She screamed all the way home from the hospital as a tiny newborn and hasn't changed her tune since. At various stages, I have found things that would make at least a few minutes of the car ride bearable: First it was shaking a rattle beside her seat in time with a song. When that started to fail, it was counting to 100 or more. Eventually, Annabelle developed an interest in books and our struggles faded, but did not disappear entirely. This week, she seems to have reached a point in her language development where we can actually have conversations in the car, and this has changed things dramatically. No matter how long the drive, we chat the entire way. Yesterday we spent 45 minutes in the car on the way to visit friends, and the entire ride was happily filled with chatter. It's always some combination of current observations and memories, and may go something like this:

A: "Car!" "Blue!"
M: "Ohh, do you see a blue car?"
A: "Yeah!" ... "More. More car."
M: "Would you like to see more cars?"
A: "More car, p[l]ease."
M: "I don't see any more blue cars, but if you look out the window you might see something else you like.
A: "BUS!"
M: "Ohhh, do you see a bus?"
A: "More bus. More p[l]ease. Bus! More!"
M: "I don't see any more buses, but if we keep watching, I bet we'll see some more soon."
...
A: "Slide. Park."
M: "You love to go on slides, don't you?"
A: "PlayPort. Slide."
M: "Oh, yes, PlayPort has a slide. Do you like to go on the slide at PlayPort?
A: "Hurt. Slide. Fun!"
M: You got hurt on the slide at Playport, but you still had fun, huh?"

A: "Yeah! Hurt. Slide. Playport. Slide."

It may be a bit repetitive, but it's quite fun. We have similar conversations throughout the day, where Annabelle remembers things that have happened. It's always amazing to me how well she can recall details, like what we ate when last we visited a certain friend. I still think of her as a baby, but she is very much a child with a mind of her own, and her wheels are always turning.

She continues to surprise me with new words regularly. Most recently, she has taken an interest in colors and often points out things that are "blue!" and "red!" though not with complete accuracy. When we were out  walking today, she pointed at the neighbor's car and said, "Silver." I did a bit of a double take. It's quite obvious that she is always watching, and is taking everything in. This is a wonderful thing, but it also means that we as parents need to be very mindful of what we say starting, well, yesterday. I often hear things repeated that make me blush. At the beach some days ago, with someone I didn't know very well, Annabelle came out of the water and very clearly declared, "Fart!" My reply was, "Oh, did you float in the water?" A total, intentional cover up. Necessary? Probably not, but she caught me off guard! We spent much of the weekend responding to another (not so) mysterious utterance with, "Oh, shirt? Yes, you are wearing a shirt!" and "Oh, sit. Are you wanting to sit?" Ahem. We're going to be much more well-behaved parents from now on, I promise!

Annabelle also received her first (and probably last of childhood) doll in the mail today. Her grammie has been quite intent on her having a doll for a long time, so we finally chose a shop and went in together to order our special, custom doll while the Grammie was in town. I may not be a Waldorf Mama, but I do love the simple beauty of Waldorf dolls, and so we designed one of our very own thanks to the wonderful ladies at Hazel Doll, and she's here!

I tried to take some good video today to record the current state of language in Annabelle-land, but most ended up showing things that should not be shown on the internet (remember the whole refusing pants thing?), or being insanely long. In the end, I settled on this one to share with you, despite not really wanting to share at all, because the lighting in the kitchen made me look a bit like death, and my dress was at least two sizes too large. Oh well. You weren't really going to click to watch me anyway.

Not much else is new around here, so there you have it: the latest with Annabelle. What's new with you and your family? How have your children amazed you this week? I would love for you to share!