Things are happening with Ruby.
For the most part, they are all good things. For the most part. Some of them are not good things – like this morning when she stood up on the dining room chair, leaned over the chair back, tipped the chair over and narrowly missed slicing her forehead open on the baseboard. Or there was also the time this week when she decided to jump off the moving stroller and landed, chin first, on the cement retaining wall of the raised garden bed we were walking beside. See bloodly chin below. And there was also the time this week when, just as she was taking her snowsuit off at the library during our regular Tuesday visit, she decided to stick her hand down the back of her pants, subsequently getting her hand covered in… well, you know what her hand got covered in. Ever tried to give a 2.5 year old a bath in the sink of a library washroom while random kids who have arrived at the library for some afterschool time are banging on the door. Its an adventure.
She’s lucky she’s cute.
With the above hiccups out of the way, she really does have a lot going for her right now. For starters, Hil and I are pretty amazed at her ability to learn the words to stories and songs. I think it is reasonable to suggest that, right now, she has between 5 and 10 books memorized. Her elocution isn’t perfect – but if you stop mid sentence, she can usually fill in the blanks on the books she knows. And she has a real lhunger for new stories. “Something new” has become one of her favourite phrases to use. She loves to wander through the library pulling books off the shelves. I actually had to apologize to a librarian for the large amount of re-shelving work she created this week – but the librarian didn’t seem to mind. At one point during this week’s visit, I found her like this:
And I’m not sure there is anything cuter that happened all week.
Then there are the songs. Charlotte was all about Mary Poppins. But for Ruby – its Annie. That cute little red headed orphan. Which, incidently, was almost what Ruby was just after we arrived at the library this week. I’ve posted a video below of one of her impromptu renditions. She’ll sing like this for 30mins when we are walking on our way to or from somewhere. She just sits in the stroller and croons. It can be difficult to listen to at times because she has this scratched LP quality to her – repeating again and again – but its also such a delightful and happy sound that there is just no way I could ever put a stop to it. See the next post for the video.
I suppose what all this amounts to is that I am really noticing a large shift in her language skills. And her thinking. When I was doing my MA there was, and probably still is, an ongoing debate about the role of language and thought. Does language preceed thinking or the other way around? I tend to think the two go hand in hand – each continually leapfrogging over the other. Regardless, often these days I find myself in actual converstaions with her. We had an interesting one about Corn Bran on Tuesday. “What’s this?” she asked me. “Its cereal.” I responded. “What cereal?” “Corn Bran” silence. then crunching. then more crunching. Then “I like Corn Bran.” Which – if you ask me – is a pretty interesting little thought journey for a 2 year old. Get something new that you are unfamiliar with. Ask a few questions and get some information. Try it. Like it. Give a review. It was a pretty fun exchange. Simple enough, of course, but when you consider that it was her first try of a new food, and that she took the time to evaluate it before rejecting it, it kind of felt a little profound – in the moment at least. Have I been able to get her to eat anything else other than corn bran this week? No. No I haven’t really had much success with other snacks. But whatever, its fortified.
3 Ginger Snaps 