I have done it!   I   have successfully taught G to say I love you.   My life is complete, I am now fulfilled, and I now fully understand why a peniless 15-year-old might want to get pregnant…she can create a fully formed person that LOVES HER, even if the loser father doesn’t.   What power.  

 G is such an imitator now; she tries to repeat everything you say, and she will say things over and over and over (and over) until she is sure what the words mean.   So I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that she eventually learned “I love you”–I say it to her all the time.   The best thing about it is that she definately seems to know what it means…she says it at the right time, and it is usually accompanied by a kiss (or two or three).   Very cute.

You don’t realize the power of words until you hear something like this.   I never would have thought hearing my two year old parrot back such an incredibly overused phrase would make me so happy, but there it is.

Genevieve is grabby and touchy. She interacts with the world through her paws and her mouth, and she has no sense about good things to touch (like food) and bad things to touch (like poop). Therefore, it falls to mom to display great horror when she touches the bad things. Now, I never know who to attribute a new phrase to (daycare, me, Jason), but “no touch!” just seemed to evolve from common sense. For example, G has had always had an obsession with sand, and when you are a baby, one way to understand a new substance is to eat it, see how it tastes, and file that info away for later. G has eaten sand since the first time I plopped her down in her new backyard sandbox we worked so hard on. Every time we go to Mexico, I am changing sandy diapers for the next several days after we return due to this habit.

Unfortunately. kitty litter bears a strong resemblance to sand. Maybe you see where I am going with this. You can imagine my horror when G toddles over as I am cleaning the litter box and sticks her hands in the mess and digs around a little. This has evoked many utterances of disgust from me, startling G and normally getting her to stop, but not really impressing on her the problem with this activity. I know that my efforts to get G to stop aren’t working because I will often come home from work only to find kitty litter scattered around the box, and I know the cats had nothing to do with this mess. Ergo the need for “NO TOUCH!”

I have found this phrase to be successful in convincing G not to engage in poo-exploration of all types. Another distressing habit she has acquired involves checking to see what is going on as I clean a “yucky” diaper. As you might imagine, this can lead to the need for a complete disinfection of the entire baby, her clothes, the changing table, and maybe even my clothes, depending on (1)how yucky the diaper is and (2) how succesful she is in her explorations before I can stop her.

I get the sense that maybe her daycare teachers have the same problem. When I see her sneaking that little paw south to check out the extent of the “yuckiness” I will say “NO TOUCH! YUCKY!” and she will stop. Oh thank god for cognitive ability. She finally seems to be getting it that yucky things are yucky and we don’t touch yucky.

So you know you have finally crossed into the lowest circle of parent-hell when you get excited about #1 and #2. I am so there. For many weeks now, discussion of bodily functions has taken up a disproportionate share of our all-too-scarce conversation time; from the early tales of G actually letting us know when she has a load in her pants (“poo poo! poo poo!”) to our constant struggle to get her to LEAVE YOUR DIAPER ON DAMMIT! so she won’t crap on the floor, to the tale, told recently by Gina, one of G’s teachers at daycare, of the baby removing her dirty diaper and waving it around in the air. I guess Gina didn’t listen when she said she had poo poo. She won’t be making that mistake again. I hope no other kids were nearby. Sounds messy.

Anyway, obviously G has mastered the terms poo poo and pee pee, although until this morning I wasn’t so sure she knew the difference. She often tells me she has poo poo when in fact she is only wet. Oh we are so proud. The baby can tell us when to wipe her ass. Parenthood. It just keeps getting better. So you can imagine my excitement when, at approximately 6:30 this morning, G wakes and proclaims that she has “pee pee”. I ask if she has to pee. She says yes. So far, so good. We head for the bathroom. I take off the diaper and sit us both down on our respective toilets. Just in case she isn’t sure how it’s done. I shall demonstrate.

Now, G’s toilet is a cute little thing that sits on the floor and plays a triumphant song if something touches the senor in the bottom of the bowl. To date, G had only managed to make the song play by touching the sensor. So you can imagine my feeling of triumph when only a few seconds after I plopped her onto her toilet, the song plays!! OHMYGOD THE BABY PEED IN THE TOILET! THIS IS FANTASTIC NEWS! A BANNER DAY! GET OUT THE CHAMPAGNE!

Although this is, in fact, maybe the best news since G figured out how to feed herself, the story has a bit of a twist. It turns out G was startled by the music heralding her victory over her bladder, and she jumped up a wee bit early (forgive the pun). Although she did manage to do about 50% of her business in the toilet, the rest was not quite so well contained, so we ended up having to get out the mop and do a little cleanup. Thank god the maids are coming today.

Oh well, you can’t have everything. At least she has figured out that telling me BEFORE she has to go is better than AFTER. You don’t have to wave around a diaper full of crap.

Genevieve gets owees, or hurts, or boo boos, or whatever you want to call them, all the time. This is mostly due to her preferred method of locomotion, which is the sprint, followed by the faceplant. She executes this maneuver on a regular basis, particularly when we go out to walk the dog in the desert.

Our outings normally go like this:

1) Unbuckle the baby from the car seat and carry her over to the trail. On the way to the trail (aprox 20 yards) , she starts squirming and kicking.

2) Put the baby down. Upon making contact with the ground, she takes off like a wind-up toy, sprinting at full tilt towards something only she can see.

3) Yell careful!! several times in her general direction.

4) Watch as some unseen crack, rock, stick, pit, or other desert-related hazard causes G to eat it. She hits the ground, thinks for a second, then decides, based on various indicators (mom’s reaction, her actual pain level, ect.) what to do. Normally, the reaction involves some combination of crying and yelling “oweee” in her plaintive, sad baby-voice.

5) Go over, pick the baby up off the ground, brush of dirt, rocks and other debris, and find out what part of the baby is hurt.

6) Kiss the hurt part(s) to make them better. Crying now stops.

7) Go to step #2. Repeat process.

This goes on for about 20 minutes, then G gets tired and wants to be carried back to the car. What is most interesting to me about the entire process is how her and I have fallen into the “kissing and making it better” part. I don’t really remember when I started doing it or why, but it really works. Now, whenever G gets an oweee, she cries until she gets a kiss, then she stops. I have even caught her making up owees just to get a kiss. Faker.

Genevieve is chatty. Odd that any daughter of mine could be described this way, given my antisocial tendencies, but apparently this is the situation. She likes to talk. And talk. And talk. Only problem is, no one has any idea what she is saying.

Jason and I have gotten used to her endless babble, only half paying attention to the noises she utters, able to pick out the few intelligible words she has mastered due to the fact that the pitch and tenor of her voice changes when she is trying to make a word as opposed to just making random sounds. We have some experience in such things, having listened to the incessant musings of Jo for 20-odd years. It’s similar, but more interesting since Jo pretty much got stuck at hello (or “whoa” in Jo-speak). We have higher hopes for G, who can clearly utter at least 10-20 words. Whew. At least she is smarter than a bird.

I always have the same reaction when I catch G making a new word…”How long has she been saying that?” I get the instant sensation of being a terrible person whose neglectful parenting is damaging her daughter’s early attempts at language…how could I have missed this? How long has she been saying “peas” when I thought she was just babbling? How long have I been trying to shove yogurt down her throat when she has been saying “all done” over and over and over? She must think she has dullards for parents. Maybe she does.

Then there’s the time she comes home from day care with new words: “nose” “eyes” and “ears” all came from there, as did “bubbles” (a favorite) and god-knows-what else. Do the teachers there have a better decoder ring than me? Who knows. Apparently they get drawn into conversation with her, whether they want to or not. Is she that person you sit next to on the plane, with no book, magazine or other distraction, just itching to tell you her life story? God I hope not.

Genevieve sings!   Ok, not really, but she does love music (particularly reggae and ska, but that’s another story).   On the singing front, she is pretty much a one-hit-wonder.   On radio Genevieve, it’s old MacDonald, all the time.     I dont know if it’s a sign of our horrendously neglectful habit of parking her in front of baby einstien or if its something she gets at day care, but she loves that damn farmer and she walks around singing e-i-e-i-o all day long.   She has a set of animal-related literature that she relates to Mac  D, and she walks around clutching these various tomes and singing until someone sits with her and sings the song.   We do the song as a duet, with her supplying the e-i-e-i’s and naming the animals and me handling the rest.   The only problem with this approach is that G’s farm contains only dogs, as this seems to be the only animal’s name she can remember.   I think she may be figuring out “cow”, but for now, it’s a “moo” in Genespeak.   I think she may also be on the verge of getting “horse”, but she seems to have a little difficulty determining which is the horse and which is the cow.   Her plight is not helped by the fact that she destroyed her “Snappy Little Farm Animals” pop-up book so that the duck has no head, the horse has no  nose, and the rooster is completely MIA.   Cruel, cruel baby.   She’s never going to win the 4-H competeition at this rate.   Maybe I should call the humane society.   That poor duck.