Random Bits

A week or so ago, I overheard Caroline saying, "Cecilia, you're Catholic." Cecilia responded, as many two year olds would, with "No!" followed by, "I'm Suh-see-uh!" "Yes," said Caroline, "your name is Cecilia, but you are a Catholic." "No!" "Yes!" Then Cecilia came running to me and said, with the upset tattling voice of a toddler, "Mommy! Caroline called me Catholic!" (Many days later, Cecilia acknowledged that we were all Catholic, as we attended Easter Sunday Mass with my parents: "Gramma is Catholic, and Grampa is Catholic, and Caroline is Catholic...")

Caroline was also explaining how Mary was assumed into Heaven (the Assumption) to Cecilia recently. I heard her saying, "Cecilia, Mary was consumed into Heaven. That means she was taken up body and soul." I can only picture these huge clouds coming down and swallowing the Blessed Mother in one huge gulp.

Cecilia used to say "taptism" instead of baptism, and she is still sometimes saying "tajamas" for pajamas. Cute pronunciations don't last long with her!

Recently, when Caroline was at her Mother's Morning Out class on Wednesday, Cecilia was playing on her own, and she looked up at me and said something she'd never said before (as evidenced by the fact that she couldn't get it said correctly): "Mommy... will you play with... us?"

A few nights ago, we made pizza for dinner. Cecilia asked for another piece, so Chris took a piece and cut it in half horizontally, so that we wouldn't waste a whole piece in case she only ate a little bit. He gave her the bottom piece, the point. She looked at its lack of crust and then said disappointedly, "It not have a stem."

After a bath, Chris will wrap Cecilia up completely in a towel and make her into a "baby burrito." She's probably almost too big for this now, at least in the baby towels... anyway, she calls it a "beerowdo" instead of "burrito." And she was calling our Hot Cross Buns "Wash Crosh Buns." That is how she says "washcloth" sometimes. And then she called the Resurrection Rolls "direction rolls." Hee hee.

Cecilia likes to play with dry rice alone on days that Caroline is at Mother's Morning Out. She has some toy dinosaurs that she plays with in the rice. Today she was listing them as we were driving home: "Other-saur and Black-saur and Green-saur and Mommy-saur and Freezer!" Freezer... so random. I think Caroline came up with that one originally. Oh, and we have "Fly-saur," a pterodactyl, but he got lost outside around the sandbox.

When we went to the pediatrician last week, we had to fill out a checklist about Cecilia's development as a 2 year old. It is geared toward 24 month olds, and she was 26 months, but close enough, I suppose. Anyway, one question asked if your child spoke in phrases which put two ideas together yet, such as "want cracker" rather than something like "red ball." I remember that Caroline just started doing this around 25 or so months, but Cecilia has been doing it for months now, well before age 24 months. Then it asked for the parents to write down an example of what the child can say... so Chris and I both went blank, since she says so much... and we decided to just write, "I like Dr. Howard," since Cecilia had said it earlier that morning. Kiss-ups, huh? ;) There are lots of detailed ones we could have written but just couldn't think of any when put on the spot. Like yesterday, Cecilia was in her swing outside and said, "I want to get down and do my pink slide with the ladder." Today in the van she said, "Will you get a paper towel and wipe off the wetness when we get home?" According to the developmental info given to us at the ped's office, by the end of the child's third year (just before she turns 3, that is), she will be able to speak in 4-5 word phrases. Yeah, okay. I love those info sheets, ha ha... they also say that she should already be able to lace beads onto a string. What's funny is even the ped says those sheets are not exactly right - and of course, each child is different.

And you may have noticed that Cecilia ends lots of words with "ness" lately. She is experimenting heavily with that suffix - there's hotness, coldness, warmness, wetness, messiness...

So, today Caroline picked up a holy card of St. Francis of Assisi at prayer time, and she asked me who it was. I told her, and she said a few things about him, referring to him as "the original St. Francis." LOL!

Randomness (as Cecilia might say!) of the day: when driving along a side street near the hospital today, I noticed a man walking along the road wearing a white t-shirt, khaki pants, and playing a bagpipe. At least, I assume he was playing it... it was in his mouth. I had the windows up and music playing so I couldn't tell for sure. There was no parade with him, so I don't know what he was doing...

And last night, it started raining while we were asleep (okay, so technically it was early this morning, then)... we weren't sleeping well anyway; Cecilia was up for over an hour for some reason, which is not like her lately. Anyway, restless sleep plus rain equals screwy dreams for me, apparently. I dreamed that our chicken tractor was in a ditch that was filled with water from the rain, and Chris and I went up to it and were trying to shift it so that it wouldn't be under as much water... and then the motionless chicken bodies floated to the surface of the water, and we sighed and said, "Aww, man - they drowned." So, a little while later I looked out the window, and the chickens were sluggishly moving around the yard, to my surprise. I said, "Chris, they're not dead!" He kind of glanced out and said casually, "Oh, yeah, they have been slowly coming out of it and getting up, " as if this was no big deal, the chickens coming back to life. Crazy.