Character Voices

On Friday the 9th we were able to have a little 18 month old friend, Ella, visit. The whole day Dani talked about her saying "This my new friend, Ella". Dani had her doctor appointment in the morning, and so I had dropped Trent off at work in order to have the car. On the way to pick up Trent, I heard Dani using a low character voice in the back, and then switching to other character voices. After a while a realized she was telling Ella a story with at least three characters.

1. A Dinosaur who wanted a "valentime box" - The dinosaur had a low voice, like a man's.
2. The dinosaurs mother - She had a really sweet sounding voice.
3. A baby - The baby had a high pitched voice and didn't say much.

Ella found the voices quite funny and would laugh after every phrase, which luckily encouraged Dani to tell more.

The different voices all started back in January when I was taking Dani down the stairs. She was wearing her coat and realized she had pockets. She put her hands in her pockets for the first time and told me she had a parrot and motioned to her wiggling pocket. The parrot then began to speak in one of my favorite voices that she makes "hello, I a parrot". We went into the stairwell and Dani pointed out the exit sign to the parrot saying "There's the egzick (exit)" and then repeated the same phrase in her parrot voice. She asked the parrot if it knew what happened in a show she had recently watched and the parrot answered back asking "what happened?"

Anyway, this well developed little character voice has appeared many times since then. It often shows up as voices for other stuffed animals, and has even made appearance in her prayers a couple days ago. Daddy asked her who said the prayer, and Dani answered that she did, but then he asked what voice she used and she said "the parrot voice".

Here is a sample of her voices and story telling. You can't see it in the video, but it is the stuffed frog (parrot like voice) and the kitty (mommy like voice) who are talking to each other in the beginning. My prompts were about the story she told Ella to see if she would replicate the voices for the video.

Though the stories are quite random at the moment, you can see how stories that she knows seem to end up in her own stories and pretend play. The baby's "sound box" and the dinosaurs' "valentine box" are from her favorite letter books, written by Jane Belk Moncure, where the characters ("Little A", "Little B" etc) find things that begin with their letter sound and put them in their box. She is able to "read" most of these books since they are similar enough in pattern that many are easily memorized.

A couple days ago, Dani was telling us another story where the baby was born and grew into a dinosaur. I'm curious what she thinks her little brother will grow into.

Super Why

Dani still LOVES TV. If I would let her, she would have it on all day long, but I feel the need to ration TV as a reward, or for times I need to get other things done. I always thought it would be easy to limit, but I have not found that the case.

When she wakes up early and I am still exhausted and tell her I want a nap, she responds "I watch a little show while you take a nap!". Unfortunately, I have taken her up on this offer a couple times.

One of her favorite shows is "Super Why". As I was watching her integrate many of the story elements into her play yesterday, I wanted to write what she has learned from this show.

1. The first thing she learned that I was very grateful for, was that tantrums and excessive crying mean you need to go to bed and sleep. Thanks to the "Jack and the Beanstalk" episode, we often talked about how the giant was having a big tantrum, which meant he needed sleep. After she saw this episode, putting her to bed when she was fussy became much easier, because she realized she needed sleep.

2. About a month ago Netflix added another Super Why DVD to their instant queue, this one included Goldilocks and the Three Bears. In the story Goldilocks makes a "big mess" and then needs to "clean up". Every time Dani makes a mess, she now apologizes "Mama, I sorry I made a big mess" and then says she needs to clean up like Goldilocks.

3. By December she knew all the typical consonant sounds from our own play. For at least a few months Super Why has been reinforcing the sounds she has learned because she will answer the questions they ask on the show like "what letter makes the /p/ sound".

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Though not as beneficial as the above points she has learned, she has also brought concepts of the story into her own life and play. Super Why's premise is that there are four storybook characters that have a problem in their real life and then they read a story to figure out how to solve their problem. The story often has a problem at the end that Super Why, the main character, changes a word or two in the story to help them solve.

4. About a month ago, Dani started responding to my concern that her hands are dirty, or her room is messy "Don't say that! Don't say that problem mama!" as if I ignored it, the problem would go away. Now when I say "I need to wipe your face" or something, she tries to negotiate by saying "don't tell me that story"

5. A couple days ago, I overheard her talking in her play. Her stuffed animal was crying and saying "I have to! It's in my story!" which is the typical plea for Super Why to change the story for a happy resolution at the end.

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That was all from only one show. It is not uncommon for Dani to tell me all about a show she has watched for the first time, and then add those details into her pretend play. I do not support letting kids watch TV in general, but it is hard to keep her away when I know I can have a break. I'm just very grateful to know that there are shows on TV that are safe, and educational, because she sure absorbs a lot more of them than I ever expected.

Dani & Reading

I've enjoyed listening to Dani "read" her books lately. She points to the words in the title as she says what she remembers the title to be, and pretends to read her books.

The first time she did this spontaneously was on the phone to Nana a few days ago. She picked up "A Frog in the Bog" and began to "read". We've only read this book 4 or 5 times since she got it from her Doctor almost 2 weeks ago.

As usual, she changed the title to "A Frog in the Log", but then she surprised me by coming close to the story as she "read"....

"A frog on a log, in the middle of the bog" (page turned)

"He spy a fly. Oh My" (page turned)

"another fly!"

Shortly after, Trent wanted to finish talking to Nana and as he took the phone back she yelled out. "I read you a story Nana!!!!"

Then yesterday, Dani was "reading" her Winnie the Pooh pop up book "The Trouble With Honey" when she changed the story to better fit her understanding of the pictures.

The picture on the first page shows Pooh covered in honey at rabbits house, after he has eaten "many, many pots of honey", according to the text. Instead of telling about how Pooh ate a lot, Dani was more concerned about the mess all over Pooh. So she read it somewhat like this.

Rabbits Voice: "Don't worry. I will help you wipe honey off your bahmin (bottom) and legs" (turns page)

The rest of the story she was more on the mark focusing on how Pooh needs help to get out of the hole he is stuck in. "Help! Robin Help!" as she thought Pooh said.

My favorite part of her reading lately has been the different character voices she uses, but that is going to wait for another post with video.

As a side note, yes the pictures were posed today while she was watching Sesame Street so I can write. So she looks a little distracted. The reason her outfit looks funny in the first pictures is because since conference time she has demanded to wear a "dirt" (skirt) every day so she can dance. So, every day she wears a skirt if her shirt is not long and flow-y enough for her to consider it a skirt.

Kitty Mask

On Wednesday the 14th, I cleaned out Dani's dress up drawer. While doing this, she found her kitty mask which she had received for Christmas and asked to wear it. She spent a good five minutes in front of her bathroom mirror doing this:

Then on Friday, she wore her kitty mask to my visiting teaching appointment. She looked a little funny going out to visit with her mask on, but she sure was excited to surprise Michael (another 2 year old friend) with her mask on. Ayen, another little girl was home from school that day was very excited to play with the "kitty".

2 Year Old Sayings

I love to hear how 2 year olds think. A friend of mine just posted about her 2 year old and it made me realize, I need to document more of what my 2 year old says.

2/26/10
At target we saw a helicopter in the sky.

Dani: "A elecopter . . . Dada, what lives in a elecopter?"

(note: she believes Nana and Papa, and Grandpa live in an airplane. Also, "live" in her vocabulary is synonymous to "belong" as in her books live on the bookshelf)

Later that night we went to Chili's restaurant. As we were getting out of the car she noticed the big chili on top of the restaurant and said:
"A apple on top!!! That be Funny!"
We then explained to her that it was a chili like the restaurants name and now every time she sees it she asks to go to Chili's kind of like we used to ask to go to McDonald's as kids.

3/1/10
Dani is quite dramatic at times. The last week of February I noticed something that looked like a rash on her heal. She didn't seem bothered by it, was walking just fine and didn't really notice when we touched it. It turns out her skin was just getting overly dry. The natural creases in her foot started to crack a little and I mentioned this to Trent and said "poor baby your skin cracked"

Then on the first of March she was looking at the bottom of her foot and began to sob saying "Dani foot twacked! Dani foot broken". She was quite inconsolable for a while until I decided to put lotion and socks on to help it soften the skin. For at least 2 weeks following she demanded to have lotion and socks on at all times and would cry if she saw the bottoms of her feet.

3/22/10
We were watching Blue Planet on Netflix and a Sea Lion showed up on the screen. Trent mentioned that it was a "huge" Sea Lion and then asked Dani if she knew what "huge" meant. She promptly responded "It's a kind of big" and then her eyes brightened because she made a connection. She looked directly at me and said enthusiastically "like momma's belly!".

Luckily, I knew not to take offense to this because I'm not really showing at the moment, I'm still wearing my regular clothes, and she is somewhat obsessed about my belly growing bigger for the baby.

3/26/10
Nana and Papa sent me a Printer/Scanner/Copier for my birthday. When I brought the package in, Dani said
"A Present! For Dani?"
I corrected her to say it was for me from Nana and Papa. She ran up to the box, gave it a big hug and said "I Love it! I Love it! I LOVE IT! I LOVE IT! Let's open it!"

4/6/10 (don't know the exact date, this is approximate, but it often gets repeated)
We've been working on getting Dani to use the big potty rather than just her little one. She told me she needed to go so we went into the bathroom in our room because it was the closest. She runs up to the toilet and gives it a great big hug.
She said something like, "This is my favorite toilet! I love it!"
I was just grateful I had recently cleaned it.

Ladybugs and Friends

We watched Dani's best friend, Ella, today while her Mom was in the hospital to have her baby sister. In the morning Dani had her 2 yr old Doctor appointment. She is still extremely tall (36 inches) and average weight for her age (26.8lb). At first, Dani was excited about going to the doctor because usually we go to the Obstetrician and she is not the focus of the visit. However, when the nurse started to look at her, she started to scream. She did not like being measured, she did not want to be weighed, she did not want the doctor to look at her feet or listen to her heart. She would scream every time the doctor tried to look at her or touch her. Ella on the other hand was a great example, very calm and just looked at Dani as if she were questioning what was the matter. The doctor showed Dani that Ella was fine with the stethoscope, but Dani still didn't trust her.

At the end, we got a book from the Reach Out And Read program, "A Frog in the Bog" by Karma Wilson and it has become one of Dani's favorite books. She even likes to tell me where she got it, even if at the time the visit was an unpleasant experience.

After the doctor appointment, we had a snack at home and then went to a ladybug party at a friends. Our friend had purchased a small bag of live ladybugs that she released in her backyard for the kids to see, catch, and feel. She provided magnifying classes and crayon rubbings of bugs, and we had a potluck brunch. They even let us catch a few ladybugs in baby food jars to bring home.

Dani was all prepared with her net, which she demanded we bring to catch the ladybugs, but she ended up being more interested in the large sandbox and toys. Ella stayed close to me with all the people around. Unfortunately, my camera battery died before I could get any pictures of this party, but I did have our video camera.

After the party we came back home to have a little nap. When they woke up we went to the park down the street and played in their sandbox with the large cement turtle. It was a little windy so we didn't stay very long, but they sure loved playing outdoors. When we got back home, Dani wanted to dress up in her skirt aka "dirt" and put on fishing hats to play a fishing game we have.

After our fishing game, we played on the balcony and let the ladybugs we caught at the party loose. Dani cheered them on as they crawled out of the jar and flew away.

While on the balcony Dani and Ella played peekaboo behind the chairs together. They played this for a couple minutes with me, so I decided to grab the camera. I caught the end of their game, but you can see somewhat how it went.

On the way to pick up Trent that evening, Dani told Ella made up stories. This was the first time I had heard her use her different voices to tell a story and Ella found it hysterical, which to my delight encouraged Dani more. Dani's story had about 3 different voices and even though the topics seemed to change randomly (the baby turned into a dinosaur and the dinosaur wanted a valentine box), it was so cute to hear her talk in her dinosaur voice, and her Mommy voice, and baby voice.

By the time we got home it was time for dinner and bed. Overall, it was a fairly busy and fun day.

My Little Dancer

While watching General Conference on Easter Sunday, Dani's first real sugar rush started to show. She ran around the condo for about ten minutes straight "dancing" and saying "ballerina!!!".

I'm not sure where she learned the concept of being a ballerina, could be another TV thing or she remembers it from the Ward Christmas program that included a rendition of the nutcracker, but if you look at her dancing in the second video taken after a nap, you may notice a few moves similar to ballet (for a 2 year old).

These videos go on for another 4 minutes each, but in order to upload them, I had to trim them to work.

Ever since this day, Dani has demanded that she wear only clothes with skirts. Dresses are fine, skirts and shirts are fine, long flow-y shirts with leggings are fine, but khakis or jeans alone require a skirt placed on top so she can dance. There is very little room for negotiation on this issue, but at least she lets me take the skirts off if we leave the condo.

It's a Boy!

Baby boy, due at the end of August.

The anatomic ultrasound confirmed it today. Dani is going to have a little brother. The last few days I feel like my belly has grown a LOT. Everything measured within normal limits, but he is a little bigger and heavier than average (~9 oz). Dani measured at a lower percentile than he is measuring right now, and she was 9lb. . . I guess I just have big babies.