Leilani and I are sick, for me it is a cold with cough, headache and sore throat, but Leilani only runs a fever and is cranky. I think she has a better immune system, or maybe mine is damaged from a lack of sleep.
She is speaking very well, but some English-only speakers, unfortunately among them Aunty Maureen, have trouble understanding her since she throws quite a bit of German in the mix. “Have fun guys” “Leilani Pippi movie anschauen (watch)” “See you nex(t) week” “Leilani panda bear book reading, come Mommy” “Katzi (kitty) spielen (play)” “I wan(t) some salt too please” (the please sometimes still needs prompting, and I am starting to use less salt…) . Leilani can even sing the first 2 lines of “Twinkle twinkle little star – how I wonder what you are”.
Today she watched Nemo, and I forgot to fast forward through the horrible beginning (I usually do) where Coral (Nemo’s mom) gets eaten by a “Raubfisch” (barracuda, but they don’t actually show any eating). When the distraught Marlin (Nemo’s father) came out of the anemone, searching for his wife and discovering that most eggs were missing (except for Nemo), Leilani sadly commented: “Marlin weinet sehr” – “Marlin is crying a lot”.
But her facsination with Nemo is quickly fading, and her recent movie obsession is Pippi Longstocking (one of my childhood–and beyond–favorites). Since I am sick and have no energy to chase her, she is watching Pippi again as I type this. Her new toys of choice are a Pippi doll, Rainbow fish, her old favorite Bmam (Mum), and the dolphin puppet Flipper. She also really likes the Pippi theme song–Andy is trying to learn the German version.
I got her several new (used) books at a yardsale, and Nemo books at Amazon. 3 of the books are by Eric Carle whose collage-drawings she likes a lot, and read them 4 or 5 times each in the last 2 days. I also got her a really cute and famous book “Guess how much I love you” and tried to read it several times, she is not interested. She sometimes says “I love you” but the book seems boring to her. She likes another book very much, Mats and the Wonderstones, which we have in German and French, and all the Rainbowfish books. Her previous favorite, “Max and the Wild Things” is completely forgotten.
[Andy has another proud Daddy story:] In the first Rainbow Fish book, the story goes that Rainbow Fish learns to share his glittery scales with his friends, so that by the end, each has one, even Rainbow Fish has only one glittery scale left. I told the story to her many times while she sat on the potty, it’s a good lesson in please-thankyou and sharing among friends. One appeal of the book is the glittery “ink” that is used to print these scales and other highlights. Then one day just after picking up the book and opening it, Leilani said “Leilaini schuppe haben too, please” (Lelani have a scale too, please) while scratching at the scales. In the meantime, we had introduced sticker books and Leilani got in the habit of peeling the stickers and resticking them. So we cut a big scale-shape out of cardboard and glued shiny paper on it, and we stuck it on her with some tape. I should suggest to the publishers that they include a similar scale in the book.
Other things she likes now are balloons (luft-ballon), Thomas the train, foam book puzzles (Thank You Grandma Rosemary!) coloring books – she is even careful enough that we let her use washable markers and stickers. She is very interested in everything that’s connected to the ocean, fish, whales, dolphins, boats of all kinds, surfboards, pirates and creatures of the deep ocean.