Day: October 30, 2006

No that is not a format I save my photos in. It stands for Thank God It’s Friday. Having worked as a salaried employee for a great part of my life, and endured school and college for another substantial part I felt the TGIF and the Monday blues often. Even now, that only Andy is working I am much happier on Friday looking forward to the weekend.

Leilani can tell when it is Monday (or maybe I should call it Dadda-going-back-to-work-day). 4 out of 5 Mondays she is cranky – really unpleasant. Almost all other days she is fine, unless she is sick or hurting, or in the car or otherwise constraint for 3, 4 hours. The strangest thing is I noticed a few a-typical Mondays (like Andy had worked the weekend, or took off half the Monday) when she still was cranky.

Friday we usually go to the beach. Last Friday she got up much earlier than usual, just past 7am, and one of the first things she said when I took her to the bathroom was – pointing to my bathingsuit which hung there – becc*- her word for beach (unfortunatelly pronounced almost the same as milk – mecc* – which she says in German, but the pointing helps.) Anyway… we went to the beach and she was happy. I believed for an entire day she could thell it was Friday, until she started the same thing Saturday. Since we didn’t go to the beach on demand she kept saying it all day long. Andy thinks it doesn’t mean anything and is just babble word.

I do have a plan to fix the Monday problem – I will pick an activity that she really likes, this Monday it will be the children’s discovery museum, or find a playgroup, and try to do it consistantly every Monday, and see if that helps.

* in German the sound at the end is ch – close to the spanish J but harder – so there the spelling would be beech and meech… she has troubles with the L

“I’d like to wear long pants too” – this is not quite as Leilani says it – but she makes it clear what she means.

Yesterday I put a beautiful orchid on the kitchen table, too busy to notice the subtle rose-like fragrance. When Leilani sat down for her meal she pointed at the flowere, crinkled her little nose and sniffed like a dog. When I let her smell the flower up closely she was very pleased.

Today was the first cold night, in the morning I still wore long pyjama pants and Leilani was already in her day-clothes, no pants. She sat on my lap and said “Me, Me” (attention getter I think, the me – you concept is still too advanced) pointed to her legs, and then pulled on the fabric of my pants. I asked if she wanted to wear pants too, and she flashed a big smile and babbled happily – my interpretation she was happy that I understood. We picked out the pants (white dress pants) together, and she wore them until noon.