We have given Leilani yoghurt since she was 9 or 10 months, but she never cared much for it. We usually buy maple syrup-sweetened organic goat yoghurt, not very sweet, but very healthy and expensive, says Andy. Only occasionally she eats more than a few bites, mostly when she wakes up in the middle of the night hungry.
Today Andy and I shared one of the sugary (though organic) fruity dessert yoghurts and did not finish. Leilani found the cup, tasted and dubbed it “Ice cream yoghurt.” This after sharing Lappert’s mango sorbet and chocolate ice cream in Poipu on Sunday–come to think of it, the yoghurt was mango flavored so that’s probably how she made the connection. Oddly enough, she’s not a big fan of mangos themselves, she tends to prefer more acid fruit. She finished the yogurt cup, wanted more and then demanded real ice cream. She got a home-made lilikoi-coconut popsicle…
Monday we were at Karla’s playgroup, and the toddlers ran around naked. We have been trying to teach Leilani to go away from other people when she has to pee (and not to wipe herself with a towel). She went way in the back where there was a dirt patch around the coconut tree, turned towards the tree, and when finished, she got Ian’s gardening toys to put some dirt over the wet spot, just like Kiko the cat.
She is pretty good potty-wise, today the morning diaper stayed on and therefore dry most of the day, except for the time when she was wearing underwear, a bathing suit or was running around naked in the garden. Recently when we are in the garden and she is not naked she often has been telling us something like “I chi-chi grass. Diaper take off!” just to be able to run around naked. For Andy’s sake (who has some weird perceptions about having to wear something Wrong, I have weird perceptions about not making fake excuses–I’ll have to teach her to just say she wants to be naked, I have no problem with that) she then squats down and pretends to pee (meaningless, because in the yard she mostly pees standing up). And here I thought she couldn’t relax again in the moment and just wanted to keep playing immediately.
One of the (anti-mothering, so last century, probably permanently damaging Leilani’s whatever but I-dont-think-so) potty training tricks we use are stickers – removable and re-stickable. Doing anything on the potty (almost always) = sticker, dry diaper = sticker, telling us she has to go = more stickers … you get the idea.
We went through a pirate and sailboat sticker album, now have one with whales, one with prehistoric animals (dinosaurs), and another one with objects in the sky. The pirates were not a big hit, but their boats and parrots were. That album had a beach scene poster that we put up next to the toilet, that’s where the stickers go. Boats and whales on the water, pirates and dinosauriers on the beach. Mamoth and homo habilis – she can say that now, first she called them “Affi”(German monkey) – on the wall next to it.
Andy adds: now I know why pirates have hooks–because babies tear their hands and arms off! When Leilani unsticks the pirate stickers, she peels them only from one end, and if an arm or a leg doesn’t pull in the same direction, it sometimes rips off.
Today was air-machinery day. The bats and owls in the sky-things-sticker-book have been used up. There’s a moon to light up the beach scene and a few stars too – so today up went the space shuttle, a jet and 2 helicoptors. She can say “Hubschrauber” (helicopter in German) very well and “helicopter” in English quite well, too. She knew to place them in the sky, and had great fun with them all of a sudden she said “All fall down” (like the song “Ring around the roses…”) ripped off the police helicoptor and put it into the ocean, laughed like mad and ripped it off again, rolled it into a ball and yelled “Trashcan!!!”. I think Andy’s relationship to helicopters has been engrained in her genes (well, I can’t say I like them either… so maybe she has double-anti-heli-disposition Andy wonders if that’s a German word :-]
Yes, I just shortened it a little. The full German word is Autosomale-Rezesiv-Genetische-Anti-Epistatische-Hubschrauber-Dispositions-Präadaption
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Leilani loves Pippi Langstrumpf (“Longstocking”), but Annika, the good little neighbor girl even more now. Annika is always orderly, clean, well behaved, never speaks back and tries to keep Pippi from doing really stupid things. Leilani always demands to see Annika; I have to draw Annika all the time; she wants me to sing Annika songs… |
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I am pretty happy about that identification… especially … because… ahem… well…
(and that’s a 386, running SCO Unix, so that’s only a short time after they stopped filming Pippi… )
In case you’re wondering, Sonja loved Pippi too, colored her hair the same, and probably behaved a little like her too. But we both noticed in this picture that the haircut is strikingly similar to Annika’s, so maybe she has a split-personality…
I’d just like to add that Andy thinks my stream of thought is hard to follow… I just wonder how other people perceive our blog-alog (from dialog)…