Somebody gave you a counting cookie jar for your first birthday, and you're finally old enough to use it properly now! You used to just try jamming random cookies in, but now you can recognize numbers and put in the appropriately numbered cookie when the jar prompts you. Except that sometimes you get into a contrary mood and start arguing with it.
"Hi! I'm Counting My Cookies Jar! Can you find the number 3?"
"NO. I don't want to find the number 3." *puts in the number 6*
"Oops, sorry, that's the number 6. Try again!"
"That not 6! That 9!"
"Let's play a game. Can you feed me four cookies?"
"I don't want to play a game."
"Let's play again real soon. Goodbye!"
"I don't want to say goodbye!"
There's also music video you like to watch called "Who Took the Cookie from the Cookie Jar?" Sometimes after watching it, you sit all your stuffed animal friends around the cookie jar and go around accusing them of taking the cookies.
There are two books at the school teacher's lounge that you particularly enjoy, The Rainbow Fish and Duck for President. I have never read them to you; each week when you finish your lunch early on Thursdays you pick random AP Chem students to read them to you. I am so grateful for their patience and willingness to humor you. One time you came home and looked at Mssr. Bear's fish and sadly said, "It not a rainbow fish." Another time you dropped Farmer Cow on the floor and said "Uh oh, he all dirty...like Duck for President." You are particularly attached to Jasper, to the point where when Jasper was gone for a field trip, you spent the whole day wandering around school asking "Where's Jasper?" And when you refuse to put on pants, the best way to induce cooperation is to remind you that Jasper wears pants to school, so you should too.
Daddy took out your IKEA tent from storage recently and you have been loving it. After watching the episode of Daniel Tiger where the rain sends them into the clock factory for an inside picnic, you love bringing all your blankets and friends and play food inside the tent and playing inside picnic. Occasionally I'll hear you singing "Turn it around and find something gooooood!" And when I peek inside the tent window, you are actually turning around in a circle inside.
Daniel Tiger has made a huge impression on you, maybe because he loves playing with his farm animals too? Besides playing inside picnic, you also enjoy playing splat-ball with my round mousepad at school, building fences with your blocks, and going to an imaginary bakery for birthday cake. You sing the clean up song whenever you pick up your toys, which I am forever grateful to Daniel Tiger for. When the U of Chicago college recruiter came to make a presentation at school during your naptime, you spent the whole assembly singing "Won't you ride along with me? RIDE ALONG!" over and over and over at the top of your lungs inside your nap closet while the poor lady tried to interest students in Chicago.
You've now reached the stage where we really can't just stay home anymore; every morning during breakfast you ask "Where we going today?" Usually it's just school, sometimes Paigey's house (inevitable response: "I wanna eat animal crackers!"), sometimes Cassidy's house ("No Gus Gus!"), but if I don't have a ready response you are happy to make suggestions (usually library, Target, or Costco). You have gotten really good at remembering when I say we're going somewhere, and you'll keep reminding me in case I forget. "After school we go library?" And if after school I tell you a student needs to make up a test first, you'll keep going to the office to check if the student is done yet, all the while reminding me that we are going to the library.
It is so gratifying, though, to see you race through the library yelling "NEW BOOKS! NEW BOOKS! NEW BOOKS!" with such obvious glee. The reader in me is so thrilled that what you remember about places is what books you read there: school has all of Baby Josiah's books, Paigey's house has Panda Bear Panda Bear, Cassidy's house has Pout-Pout Fish, Costco has the book that sings Old MacDonald, etc. And the other night instead of going to sleep, you just kept chanting "I wanna read books! I wanna read books! I wanna read books!" When you wake up in the morning, you bring your books over to the IKEA stove to read by the light of the burners and my heart just wants to burst. Besides the cows everywhere, the other major appeal of Chick-Fil-A is that you get a new book, and when you get your kids' meal you inevitably look for the book first. Then when you get home you have to take out all your other "Chiffy" books and line them up and examine your collection and talk about which books you still need to collect.
We went on a picnic (outdoors) at the park by Paigey's house and instead of eating, you wanted to read your book first. And then after you read your book, you still didn't want to eat; you ran over to the playground area and bravely climbed the structure by yourself and slid down (to Paigey's cheers). Then you cruelly abandoned Paigey to befriend an older girl who was pouring water with her toy teapot. I had to laugh at how slyly you sidled up to her at the ledge and leaned over on your elbows and smiled at her. I was too far away to hear what you two talked about, but in no time at all you were playing on the structure together and sharing her teapot. When it was time to go, you held out your arms and gave her a big hug and all of us Sanity Club mamas laughed at how you just picked up an older girl. Maybe you have your daddy's WOO...
Ever since we took you to the ultrasound appointment to find out the coming baby's gender, you've been convinced there's a zebra growing in Mommy's tummy. Since the ultrasound was black and white and stripy, and the heartbeat sounded like galloping hoofbeats, I guess it makes sense? Now every time you come with me to my OBGYN appointments you ask if we're going to listen to the zebra. I'm not sure how you'll react to a baby instead of a zebra, especially considering your penchant for yelling "No Gus Gus! No Tommy!" I do get glimpses of your sweet heart, though; we went to Souplantation with Paigey's family and you tried to share your precious raisins with Baby Kina when she was crying.
Your collection of things you require in order to sleep just keeps growing. For some reason you've latched onto my fuzzy white bathrobe and named it "Pyo Pyo," so when we tuck you in at night the order is Yellow Blankie (alphabet side up so that you can see the letter Z), then Bo Blankie (animal side up of course), and then Pyo Pyo. During the day you like wearing Pyo Pyo as a cape but it's so huge it swallows you up and you look like a tiny white Jawa, or maybe Princess Leia in her hooded dress. I asked if you would like to wear your Quidditch robe (which is actually your size, that I painstakingly sewed for you to wear last Halloween for all of twenty minutes), but you vehemently declined. Of course.
You get panicked whenever you see "tiny buggies" and insist that "Mommy kill it!" The funny thing is that you always want to see the dead spider, fly, carpet beetle, etc. If I vacuum it up you are extremely disappointed to not be able to see it. One time a gnat started flying around the window when you were eating breakfast; after the inevitable panic, you remembered that frogs eat flies, so you asked me to draw you a frog on the dry erase board. Then you wanted a fly for the frog to eat. Then you got upset that there was a fly on the board and asked me to erase both the fly and frog.
You are always watching and absorbing, even when we think you aren't. After many, many mornings quietly observing Daddy making coffee with the Aeropress, one day during lunch you spontaneously put your water bottle on top of your water cup and announced "I making coffee! It come out the bottom! I bring it to work like Daddy!" Another time, two weeks after Auntie Elaine's birthday, for which I made two cakes, you stacked some blocks together and announced that you were making a birthday cake for Auntie Elaine. One day during breakfast you rolled up your pancake and said it was a burrito. Scary, all the things you remember that we don't realize you know!
Now that you're front-facing when riding in Daddy's car, you can see a lot more, namely billboards. You love pointing out Chewbacca and Darth Vader and the caveman and The Man, the latter being a random dude in a suit advertising an attorney specializing in car accidents. You remember that you're supposed to see them on the way to church and daycare, and even though they switched out Chewie and Vader for beer ads, you still have to remind us that "it not a Chewbacca. It a bottle now." When we went to the Children's Discovery Museum in San Jose and ate a picnic lunch outside, several lightrails went by with the same accident attorney advertised on the side, and you started jumping up and down screaming delightedly, "It the man! It the man! On the train! The same man!"
You know so many songs now! There are so many common themes in kids' songs that you do get them mixed up sometimes, e.g. "Old MacDonald had a farm...and Bingo was his name-oh! B-I-N-G-O! B-I-N-G-O! B-I-N-G-O...B is for ball, B for bus, B for baby shark...Baby shark doot doo doo..." You love singing the phonics song to yourself and while some letters have fairly consistent examples (C is always for cow and cat, D is for dog, etc.), sometimes you surprise us by making a connection with a word we haven't explicitly taught you. Today you said that U is for unicorn...and universe. You love spelling out the words you see and making guesses about what they might say based on your assumptions. At school you have a Chinese/English picture book and you painstakingly spelled out "O-X-F-O-R-D-P-I-C-T-U-R-E-D-I-C-T-I-O-N-A-R-Y," and thought about it for a bit...then triumphantly announced "That spells magazine!"
Lastly, here's a comparison shot of you at five months, and again two years later, at the same Korean restaurant, in the same booth, sitting on Daddy's lap. You used to be mesmerized by the TVs there because you never saw screens at home, but now you're much more interested in playing find-the-vegetable with the placemats.
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