Mind of Her Own

Okay. So Kiki has decided that patting her leg for dog is too mundane. She has now decided that dog? Is patting her chest. She is adamant about it. She refuses to budge on the topic no matter how often we try to correct her.

I think she is also making up her own signs. At first I just thought they were new gestures, but she makes the same gesture repetitively and in the same context. Well, however you might define context. At various points during the day she will stop whatever she is doing, catch my eye, smile winsomely, and place both hands on her chest. I don't know if she's saying she's happy or she loves me or she just pooed. Well, I'm being facetious; it's obviously not the latter (I've checked.) It means something to HER, obviously. I wonder how frustrated she's feeling that I'm not getting it.

She's probably just saying "Dog" in a new differently wrong way to get my goat.

This weekend she got tired of stacking evidently and preferred to either hand me the toys or bang them together. I'm pleased she's handing things over though; that's a big step! I'm trying to teach her please this way. Of course it's only been since I've been teaching her please that she's changed her mind about how to sign dog.

This happens a lot. When she's mastered something -- what does a lion say, for example, or signing dog -- when we try to expound upon it, teach her a different thing that is somewhat close, she gets the things confused. For example, when she mastered "What does a lion say?" we tried adding "What does a sheep say?" because she'd been making "ba ba ba" noises independently.

Well, what happened at first was that we got a lion and a sheep, and then a lion and a demonic sheep (growling the "ba ba ba") and then only a lion for a loooong time. Now we've gotten the demonic sheep back at last, which is making me rethink dressing her as a lion for Halloween. C'mon, what's scarier than a demonic sheep?

Of course the whole family has gotten behind the lion thing and decided to make it an Oz theme. Bri is going to dress as Dorothy, which blows my mind because that means she's actually willing to dress up like a GIRL!

Chris however refuses to be either a scarecrow, tin man, or flying monkey. He's decided he wants to be a red ninja. I don't know either. We've tried explaining that red isn't exactly a stealth color, but Chris kind of sees things his own unique way.

When we suggested he dress as Toto, Bri changed her mind about being Dorothy and wanted to be Toto instead. Arrgh. Kids are tough.

Anyway, it's a nice thought for me and Kipp to consider dressing as a tin man and a scarecrow -- he's OBVIOUSLY going to be the scarecrow -- but I doubt we'll pull that one together.

Grandma and Grandpa got Kiki an after-surgery gift -- a V.Baby video gamey kind of thing. The first night Kiki showed an interest only in the receiver, not in the controller. Now she plays with the controller gleefully but hasn't quite made the connection that what she's doing is having an effect up on the TV screen.

And Daddy bought her a chair tonight. I thought a simple, you know, chair. I should know better; if I'm thinking simple and functional, I need to go out and get it myself before EVER mentioning it to the Daddy. Because the second Daddy was unsupervised, he went out and bought a cushy Dora chair that plays music.

Kiki won't sit in it. She prefers to sit in front of it and look at it. And, you know, dance.

Also discovered this weekend that the built-in car seat in my van? That Kiki has ridden in exclusively for the past week or so? And loved to distraction? Umm, well --

We decided to go out as a family this weekend to a old car expo thingie they were having in the next town over at a strip mall. Papaw's band was playing for the last time this season, and we had to catch it. So, we loaded up everybody in Daddy's car, which meant Kiki had to sit in the old-not-the-van-car seat.

She SCREAMED the entire way. SCREAMED. Inconsolably. So I think the lesson here is -- when she finds something she REALLY and OBVIOUSLY loves, don't try switching it with something else.

If only we could take the van seat and put it in Daddy's car. Of course, it wouldn't then be exactly safe or anything. Oh, sure, you could say, "Well, just do family outings in the van! Duh!"

My van's windows don't roll down. There's some kind of malfunction. Oh, sure, you SAY fix it, as if that's an obvious... um, fix.

Yeah, maybe we should.