Mike was out of town again for part of the week and most of the weekend. I had to leave work early on Thursday and Friday night to pick them up from Ms. Jo's. It was nice ... we got into an evening dinner routine. They watched an episode of Dora the Explorer on Netflix streaming while I got things ready. We sat down to a simple but yummy meal. They had avocado slices, some grapes, corn dish casserole, and soy nut butter and jelly sandwiches while I had lightly battered Trader Joe's chicken, sun dried tomato and goat cheese ravioli with tomato sauce. For ease we had the same meal both nights, but it was so good we didn't mind.
Thursday night while chomping down on her avocado Isla said, "Mama, where's dada?"
Mae chipped in with , "He's at work." which is my typical reply.
"Actually," I said, "He's not at work. He's on a trip."
Isla replied, "Oh! Mama, I go on a trip too!"
I sat the girls down for breakfast on Saturday morning bright and early. We were enjoying a nice breakfast and a lovely, although fairly one sided (on my part), conversation. Wondering if they would remember the discussion from 2 nights before I said, "Girls, where is dada?"
"He's at the airport," my 21 month old replied.
I smiled, said something about how he would be going to the airport the next day to catch a flight home from his trip and then I racked my brain trying to figure out if I had said ANYTHING about an airport in the last few days. Nope. Hmm. Someone else (maybe Jo or the big kids at daycare?) must have said something to her about going to the airport to go on a trip. Or did she remember it from our July trip to the Jersey Shore? Unbelievable.
Little kids really are sponges! It's easy to take for granted all the learning that is going on inside their brains especially before they are really verbal. Both of my girls have reminded me of this fact in their own ways.
Mae was delayed with speaking and pointing. We'd read books over and over and over (which she loved) and she would never point to or name anything in them. But often out of the blue, just when you felt like the repetition wasn't helping, she'd do or say something that made me realize she was making connections. Like for months and the better part of her 2nd year when she'd hardly ever say a word while we were reading a book to her. Then, almost overnight she was reciting most of Madeline right along with us. Similarly she had an evaluation by a new speech therapist (when she was 2 & 1/2) who was trying to determine if she was a candidate for a springboard device, which helps kids with limited verbal skills communicate. They got out their I-PAD and put on a program asking her to identify specific objects when listed with 1 or 2 other options. It would list 3 pictures and a voice would say, "can you find the bicycle?" She got most of the objects right! I remember being floored by all the things she knew that I didn't realize she could identify-- some of which I knew she had limited (if any) exposure to. I'm so glad we never gave up reading books and explaining things to her just because she wasn't talking much and pointing and naming stuff when we thought she should.
Geez, we adults can be so impatient and needy. Like, come on 2 year old, I need you to validate that all this time I'm spending reading books to you is paying off ... come on, give me something. Point to a bird and say tweet tweet for crying out loud! I'm so embarrassed that I felt like I needed that from her. Sorry baby.
Little Isla reminds me of the freaky sponge learning thing almost daily largely because she is so verbal at such a young age. She'll often point toand name an object in a book we're reading. Often times it's something I had no idea she even knew. Once, she picked up a book from a big pile of books in my bedroom. It had the word CATS written across the front with no pictures and no design. I had never read it to her and to my knowledge, she hadn't seen it before. She smiled and said, "Oh, Cats!" Mike and I looked at each other like, did you read that to her? No, did you? No. Weird. So, either she had seen the inside of the book before somehow which did have some cat pictures, or, she's seen a picture of a cat somewhere with the word CAT written under it and remembered how the word looked. Either way, she remembered. Crazy.
My little baby nooshes will teach me so much more than I will ever teach them.
