But...
Arrived in my inbox this week, was the monthly newsletter from Babycenter.com that I've been giving since Bobbin was first born, describing the developmental milestones we can expect her to achieve for this month, typical behaviours we're likely to see, and other stuff.
This month we were informed that "The typical young preschooler picks up new words every single day and will soon be able to string them together in sentences from two to four words long". We're well past that. Even when she's not using conjunctions to lengthen her sentences and express more complex ideas, she's easily composing and speaking endless paragraphs of 6-12 word sentences. The appearance of the aforementioned conjunctions though has been swift and noticeable. She loves to experiment with new grammatical structures almost as much as she loves to experiment with new words themselves. The fascination with words is something I expected. The fascination with constructing sentences is interesting and unanticipated in my scientific mombservations. I guess I never thought about the fact that she'd be interested in increasing her skill in sentence construction and explicitely experimenting with that; I thought sentence formation at this age, before she can actually read, would be more organic in nature, and variety would be more resulting from repeating sentence constructs she's heard, and less intentionally creative. But she's very intentional in her sentence experimentation. In watching her take such care in building these sentences and using the conjunctions and other grammatical constructs in intentional ways - sometimes correct and sometimes incorrect but intentionally either way - I'm really learning about how Bobbin is learning. It's waaaaaay fascinating (that's "way" used as an adjective). This week, we've learned how to use the word "but" in much more complicated constructs than the not-surprising "But I don't want to". Take our conversation today in the car.
Mommy: Bobbin, what should we have for dinner tonight? (I knew the answer, which is why I asked; it happened to be the only thing we had in the house having not gone grocery shopping this weekend)
Bobbin: Hotdogs and Macamoni and CHEESE!
Mommy: Sounds like a plan, then!
Bobbin: Mommy, amember peekaboo hotdogs?
Mommy: Yes, I remember peekaboo hotdogs ("Peekaboo hotdogs" are corndogs. Last year - exactly 1 year ago to be precise - we were in Bobcaygeon for my sister's wedding. We went out to lunch to a local cafe. The only kind of hotdogs they had on the menu were corn dogs. Bobbin wouldn't eat anything but hotdogs, so to try and entice her to eat a corndog instead, I showed her that the hotdog was "hiding" inside the crust. She saw the hotdog and yelled, "Peekaboo hotdog!" and henceforth she has referred to corndogs as peekaboo hotdogs. Although she's never seen one since because she made it clear she would never actually eat one).
Bobbin: Mommy, I don't like peekaboo hotdogs, BUT (she empasized it strongly and then gave a slight pause for impact so her audience could notice her usage of the word 'but' and ponder on it) I DO like regaloor hotdogs
Mommy: That's good to know. we'll have regular hotdogs then.
Bobbin: Mommy? You know why I don't like peekaboo hotdogs?
Mommy: No, why don't you like them?
Bobbin: So, because I like regaloor hotdogs, BUT I don't like peekaboo hotdogs.
Mommy: Hmm... you lost me. Can you explain it differently? Why don't you like peekaboo hotdogs?
Bobbin: So, I like REGALOOR hotdogs.
Mommy: Ok. So we'll have regular hotdogs.
Bobbin: Mommy? I like hotdogs but I want macamoni and cheese too. So we can have bowf. Ok? Ok.
Mommy: that's settled then. No peekaboo hotdogs. Only regular hotdogs and macaroni and cheese.
Bobbin: BOWF. macamoni and cheese but also (this time she placed emphasis on the word 'also' which we've also been hearing her experiment with lately) I want hotdogs.
Mommy: Yes. We will have both Macaroni and Cheese, and hotdogs.
Her deductive reasoning skills and cause & effect analytical skills are also growing in leaps and bounds and that's been just as fascinating to observe - to see how she chooses to connect two seemingly unrelated events or ideas. Sometimes the connections are correct and sometimes not, but in either case it's a fun glimpse into the inner wiring of her little neurons and the relationships that she's building up within her brain. The "not correct" relationships are just as, and often more, telling and fascinating as the "correct" ones.
On Sunday (2 days ago) Tim and Bobbin and I were getting ready to go to the zoo. We got in the car, and Tim turned the ignition and the "low oil" indicator came on. Tim turned off the car and went into the house to get a new container of oil. I explained to Bobbin what Daddy was doing when she asked. When Tim raised the hood, the gap at the hinges allowed Bobbin to see through to the engine and watch Tim pour the oil in the car. I explained what he was doing. She noted the black bottle and asked what colour the actual oil was. I told her it was kind of brownish. She asked why it was needed. I explained that the car needed oil to work - that it wouldn't drive properly if it didn't have oil. Tim finished up and we went to the zoo and had a blast.
Almost two full days after the oil incident, I picked Bobbin up today after school. It was sprinkling lightly and my windshield was kinda cloudy. I squirted the windshield washer fluid and ran the wipers to clear it up. The liquid that came out was a dirty brownish colour instead of the usual clear or slightly blue-tinged cleaner colour. I made an offhand comment like "Hmm... that's a weird colour" and was about to move on when Bobbin asked (rather, insisted on) me to do it again so she could see the colour. I squirted more fluid on the windshield and she said "Mommy, know why it is that colour? why it is yucky brown?" I replied "No... not really". "Mommy, amember when daddy put oil in the car? And maybe daddy's oil makes the yucky brown colour. Why Daddy put oil in the car to make it move and it makes a yucky brown colour on the windshield?".
Wild. She had made several connections. One that the oil and the windshield washer fluid source were located in fairly close proximity to one another, under the hood of the car. Despite the fact that she's never seen Tim change the windshield washer fluid. Nor have we ever talked about the windshield washer fluid at any length (although apparently it is a fascinating subject to ponder). And she made a connection that the strangeness of the colour of the fluid (which she's never noticed herself before) must be as a result of the oil that Daddy poured into the car two days ago. I have absolutely no idea if that's the case, but the fact that she thinks so is interesting to me.
Oh, hey, Tim... when you get a chance can you check the windshield washer fluid in the car? It's coming out a yucky brown colour.
Today Bobbin also had her first potty accident in months at school. It occurred minutes before I arrived to pick her up. She was devastated. Embarrassed. Angry. All of the above. After I managed to calm her down and let her know that these things happen and sometimes our bodies just need to go and can't wait for us to finish playing first, I asked her what happened because it has literally been months. "My pee pee sneaked up on me" she blurted out between sobs. "I was playing outside and I didn't want to go potty and I wanted to play and then I felt my pee pee coming but I was outside, so my teacher took me in to the potty but I didn't want to use THAT potty, I wanted to use the other potty and my pee pee came out and I peed on the floor over HERE, see, c'mere Mommy, Look? See that pee pee on the floor? And then my teacher was taking me to the other potty and I peed my pants". She started crying all over again as she relived the trauma. My heart just broke. She was so upset with herself and I could see that she had figured out on her own that she shouldn't have waited; that she should have stopped playing when she felt the need to go. So I didn't think I needed to remind her of that. We got her all cleaned up and she was back to her old self again (after I managed to coax her into wearing her running shoes without socks since they too were quite soaked from the incident). Although her old self these days is really all about defying Mommy and Daddy and seeing just how far we can push the "No" and the nasty voice tones until something happens (which these days is pretty swift; I have VERY low tolerance for nasty tones of voice - from anyone, at any age. It's really unpleasant and I'm hoping that because there are swift and consistent consequences that we can get through this "testing" phase fairly quickly). Anyway, we got everything taken care of, got dressed and then headed home which was then where we had both the oil/windshield washer discussion followed by the hotdog discussion.
Is it any wonder at the end of the day I'm mentally drained?
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