You can call Fiona late to dinner (who wants to eat dinner anyway?) but DO NOT call her cute. Cute is the LAST thing she wants to be. Cute is for babies. If you want to encourage Fiona to wear a certain outfit -- or, as is usually the case, encourage her to simply get dressed in ANYTHING -- tell her that it's "fancy." Seriously. No matter whether it's a t-shirt and leggings or a tiara and high heels. Thank you, Jane O'Connor and "Fancy Nancy."
Here are two of Fiona's recent ensembles: Rowan at 9-1/2 months is changing at a rapid clip. Who is this big boy? Otis wants to know, too.
Months ago, Rowan went through a brief phase where he would say "Haaaaah" and sort of wave his arm in the air. It was usually a greeting in the morning from his crib, so it seems to safe to say that "Hi" was his first word. Coming in at number 2, there's "Ffffff." This does not mean "Fiona." Like every other infant, Rowan loves ceiling fans. There's one in his room that he gazes at a lot. On Thursday, I picked him up from his crib and he threw his head back to look at the fan, which was on high speed (we went from cold and rainy to hot and humid. Just can't win). I pointed and said, "Fan. Can you say fan?" Lo and behold, he said, "Ffffff." I said, "Yes! Fan!" So he said it again and giggled. Now whenever we go into his room he looks up and says, "Fffff." Bittersweet, and I hesitate to say it's a real word, but let's just say the syllable "ma" is coming out, on repeat. Rowan only ever says it when he's in distress. But he's gotten to the point where he consistently says it in distress. "Mamamamamamama," he'll cry. Argh. Like I said, bittersweet. Fiona's interested in time, though it's still a very confusing concept for her. We tell her, "You can not wake up Mommy and Daddy until the first number on your clock is a 6." She seems to get that and, after a few weeks of popping up at our bedside when the clock said "5" ("The clock needs new batteries!" she'd cleverly but wrongly declare), she is back to getting up at a more reasonable hour.
Sometimes, Fiona looks at the big clock face in the kitchen and announces, "It says 11 and 5." I respond, "Yes. That's 11:25." She likes numbers. We count lots of things, like numbers of bites she has to take of my delicious dinners. "Four more bites," I'll say. She looks at her hands and holds up the correct number of fingers with an inquiring look. Lots of Fiona's sentences begin, "Nexterday, . . ." This is a great word. It covers all of the territory between past and present, "next" and "yesterday," so it really flummoxes the listener. "Nexterday, when I swing on the swing, I got a booboo." Okay. Pretty sure this was "yesterday" or "the other day." Past. But, "Nexterday, at Isaac's birthday, will he have a Spiderman cake?" This was a question that came up prior to Isaac's birthday, so in this case we're looking into the future. Fiona surprised me with her knowledge of language twice today: once when we were reading a book, and she said, "Why is there a zoo?" Sure enough, while the text was about a museum, Fancy Nancy had drawn a map of her town including her house, the museum, and the zoo, indicated with big "Z-O-O" letters. No animals, just the word. Awesome. The second time was when I spelled "Disney" to Brian, explaining that Uncle Britt and Aunt Amy were heading there soon. I'd hoped to avoid the 99 questions that would follow when Fiona heard the name of one of her favorite places on earth. Instead, she said, "Are they going to Disney?" HOW DID SHE KNOW THAT'S WHAT I SAID? |
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