Phoebe-isms

Alexander is huge into jokes right now and rather appreciates when he stumbles across new material in a good joke book. In fact, he's mentioned his little joke books so many times that Phoebe has picked up on it and when she wants people to listen to one of the little jokes she's drummed up she shouts out, "Hey! Listen to me! I've got a joke book!"

*****

Many of my children have understood and said "soak and wet" instead of "soaking wet," so many that sometimes we opt to say "soak and wet" ourselves.

Phoebe has a similar "-and-"construction that she uses. Instead of saying "Duolingo," which all the children (and I) have been engaged in for hundreds if not thousands of days (my current streak is 2095 days). 

She says "do-and-lingo."

Sometimes when the kids and I are all busy with schoolwork she will take it upon herself to get down an iPad and open to one of her little games (she has Teach Monster, Baby Dress Up, Daniel Tiger, a puzzle app, and some train track game at her disposal). When we find her with it, she'll say innocently, "I'm just doing maff hour" (math hour), or "I'm just doing do-and-lingo."

Schoolwork doesn't count against screen time, you see? (Not that we're very good at tracking or enforcing such a thing as screen time). 

*****

Alexander said family prayer this evening. In what may have been the middle of his prayer, but which ended up coming very near the end he said, "And please help Phoebe to stay in her own bed and stay dry.." 

Phoebe gasped with indignation.

"LIKE I USUALLY DO!!"* she shouted towards the heavens.

And then he had to quickly end the prayer so we could all let out our stifled laughter.

* She is working to earn a backpack to take on a sleepover to Grandpa and Darla's house. The deal for the backpack is that she has to stay dry for 30 nights and at least 5 days in a row. I can't remember how many nights we're at, but I do know that her longest streak is 4 days in a row. She has been doing great at staying in her own bed (even if she climbs up into Zoë's bed sometimes to bug her instead of us...and, as illustrated below, she's still not above waking us up at night if she really needs us). It's been a very nice change for us. Our sleep scores look incredible!

*****

I don't remember if I ever did my full-on rant about our most recent well-child checks. I think I did. About how the doctor was quizzing Phoebe on vocabulary words and decided that I might consider speech therapy because she felt Phoebe was behind compared to her "socialized peers." 

But like...the doctor also didn't understand that Phoebe is just plain stubborn. She's not a quiz-able kid. If you want information from her you have to coax it out of her otherwise she'll assume you're...not very clever...and will start messing with you.

Like, you can't just ask her to tell you what things are. She knows what things are. And she knows that you know what things are. So if you ask her, she's going to either roll her eyes (she's scary good at that for three years old) or will simply tell you the wrong answer.

So she refused to say "frog" at the doctor's office, told the doctor that her green folder was orange, and purposely mixed up Rachel and Miriam's name (a longterm prank she has been pulling since she was about six months old—and she still thinks it's hilarious). 

Like, I know she knows frog and green and who her sisters are. But the doctor literally believes that she doesn't. 

Anywho...the other night she woke up and was in a tizzy because she couldn't find her Baby Shark. 

Baby Shark is an official patented Baby Shark shark, but it's actually Daddy Shark, not Baby Shark (don't try to tell her that, however...just roll with it being Baby Shark). It's a little stuffed toy that I think Alexander got from a primary teacher years ago. 

Phoebe keeps it in a stuffed-animal Kleenex box in her bed. That is, the box itself is a "stuffy" of sorts—it's a plush Kleenex box that I got for her a couple of years ago to keep her quiet on some plane trip we took. It came with a bunch of silk scarves that a baby can enjoy pulling out of the box over and over again. She stopped playing with it months ago, perhaps a year ago, so I put it in a bin of "to keep" baby toys in the basement. But I pulled it out to harvest the silk scarves for a music lesson one Sunday. 

Anyway, Phoebe's interest in that toy was rekindled. She didn't really want the scarves, but she definitely wanted that "stuffed animal Kleenex box." 

It's perfect for keeping all her tiny stuffed animals in so she doesn't lose them in her bed!

She has this collection of Very Important stuffed animals that are teensy-weeny. They're very obnoxious to keep track of, but she'll panic if any of them are missing. So I'm actually rather glad she came up with the Kleenex box system. 

The other night, however, she woke up in an absolute panic because Baby Shark was missing. 

I reminded her about her Kleenex box.

"Oh, yeah," she said sniffling. "Let's see..."

She shoved her hand into the box and pulled out one of her toys. 

"Nope!" she said. "That's just my axolotl."

"Let's see what else is in there..."

"My puppy. My whale. My other puppy. My pumpkin. Oh! Here it is! My shark!"

"Thank goodness we found it! Let's tuck you back in."

"Wait! I have to put all my things back!" she said...and she stuffed the puppy, the whale, the other puppy, the pumpkin...and the shark...back into the Kleenex box, which she put to the side of her pillow.

"Do you...want to snuggle with your shark?" I asked.

"No," she said, yawning and nestling into her pillow. "I just wanted to know where it was."

"Okay," I said (feeling just a tad ill-used at that middle-of-the-night hour). "Fabulous. Glad we know now. Let's get you tucked in."

*****

Writing the word "shove" reminded me that she likes to narrate her verbs. 

I thought of "shove" specifically because one of her favourite things to do is to shove her hand down my shirt. 

"Shove, shove, shove," she'll say. ("Excuse me," I'll say.)

When she plays with her toys they "walk, walk, walk" or "drive, drive, drive" or "swim, swim, swim."

When she plays in the sandbox she "dig, dig, digs." Sometimes she even "build, build, builds" while she's playing with blocks or Magnatiles or something. Is she helping in the kitchen? Chances are she'll say "mix, mix, mix" (or "mixa, mixa, mixa," depending on the day). 

It reminds me a little of my brother Patrick when he was little. He wouldn't say verbs but he was an onomatopoeia baby and would say things like, "Achoo!" and "Cough! Cough!" and "Gasp!"

And we were never quite sure how he knew to say those things while he was doing them...

I suppose the verb narration is more easily explained, but nevertheless, Phoebe reminds me of young Patrick. 

And speaking of Patrick...the other day Phoebe did a drawing and included a big P on it. She asked me to send the picture to my family chat, so I did, with a little caption that said, "Look at my P! Isn't it beautiful?"

Patrick wrote back and said something like, "As a fellow letter P connoisseur, yes very much so!"

Fun for them to share that P initial!