up to 3 1/2 years old
this quarter
- READING!!!
size
- 39 inches
- 34 pounds
activities
- another trip to Strasburg
- pumpkin patch trip
- visits from aunts&uncle
- Disney World
interests
- yeah, I know. trains.
- Toy Story II
- Lion King
- General Disney
- Parades
Maddie so wants to read her Thomas book that she sits alone with it and makes up stories that she thinks sound like Thomas stories. A typical made-up line: "'Don't be so impatient, Gordon,' Thomas replied, as he chuffed along." She'll ask what certain words are in the book, and try to sound them out.
It inspired me to buy a book called something like "Teach your child to read in 100 lessons." She went through 33 of the lessons in about two weeks. By Sept. 11, she could read the following, quickly and alone: "That cat can sit in sand. This cat can run on sand. See the feet." By Halloween, she could read entire books like "A Fly Went By" with minimal help.
Thomas curse
She has taken to referring to people as trains. She's Thomas, I'm Edward, mom's Gordon, and her grandparents are Annie and Clarabel. The other night, she saw me walking and started to hum the Edward theme.
Those who repeat the past are condemned to forget it
All summer long, she would shriek if we tried to let her swim alone (with her water wings). The frustrating thing is that she was doing it fine last fall. Finally, with perhaps three pool visits left in the summer, we were at a friend's house and she broke through again, swimming quite happily without any help. We can only hope she'll remember THIS next time we get the opportunity to swim (probably November at Disney World).
Kids
She's much better with kids than she used to be. We took her to two parties one weekend where she initiated contact with other kids. It helped that she had a few of her trains and took it as an opportunity to proselytize. One of the other kids' parents said how nice she was to befriend their daughter. I said they might not want to thank us when they realize introduction to Thomas is like getting your first hit of crack.
But she's incredibly shy immediately when she gets somewhere. She was talking about wanting to see Hannah at the park, but when we got to the park it took several minutes before she'd stop clinging to me and actually play with Hannah.
The Boogie Boogie Song
After a weekend with Aunt Annie and Uncle Chris, Maddie took a late nap. When we tried to wake her up, she didn't respond. She felt very warm. Just when we were starting to worry, she stuck her finger in her nose, pulled out some cargo, and said:
"Boogie, boogie, boogie,
Who wants to hold the boogie?"and started laughing. We realized she was probably fine.
Disney World
We went down in early November. While almost everything was a lot of fun, three things stood out for her:
1) characters;
2) the millennium parade at Epcot (a kind of Cirque-de-Soleil-ish pageant);
3) 3-D movies.
The characters were all over, and she got them to sign her picture book. The 3-D movies (she saw parts of three) were terrifying to her, and considering the amount of time to get in/through the shows, that ended up being pretty bad. The first one had scary things, the second seemed tamer but was still too much for her, the third was a surprise-- we thought it was a normal show. A month later, she still remembers Disney partly for the 3-D terror.
