Playdate Party

On Saturday we had plans to meet some friends of Andrea's from her teaching program for a late afternoon get together/play date (Andrea's friends have a son, Jonathan, who is about 6 months older than Fiona). A few highlights from the day:

• When Fiona started complaining about going down for her nap after lunch, we told her that she needed to rest up because when she woke up from her nap, we were going to go to a party. This proved not to be the wisest tack, as Fiona wound up sleeping for only 45 minutes instead of her usual 90-120. When she woke up, the first thing she said was "I go to party!" Yep, she was so excited by the word "party" that she shortened her nap.
  
  
• After we explained that we couldn't leave for the party yet, since she'd taken a much shorter nap than we expected, Fiona kept repeating "I go to a party" as she played with her play-doh. We realized that "party" might not have been a good word to use at all, since Fiona seemed to be under the impression that this was going to be a birthday party (the only kind she knows), rather than a get-together where the adults are terribly boring while they drink wine and nosh cheese while a couple of kids who don't know each other are asked to share toys. So we quickly started substituting the word "get together" and explained to Fiona that we were going to go see some friends of Mommy's. Fiona then spent the whole car ride out to Long Island repeating "go see friends of Mommy."
  
  
• I've written about how Fiona's really starting to differentiate genders as her princess phase gets underway. So I was amused to see that the first thing Jonathan did when he showed off his toys was to take two trucks and ram them into each other. Gender coding is powerful stuff.
  
  
• Fiona's obviously had plenty of experience playing with other kids at day care, but it was fun for us to watch her play with another kid. After a few minutes of shyness they started playing... well, not together, but next to each other. Part of that was because they were each interested in different things--Fiona was interested in the stuffed animals and crayons, while Jonathan focused more on his trucks and trains. But there was much less shock on Fiona's part when Jonathan wanted to play with a toy she'd been playing with than there was a few months ago when I saw her playing at day care.
  
  
• Toward the end of the party get-together, Jonathan and Fiona did play together when they decided to start racing across the laundry room. Both toddlers were strongly of the opinion that their parents should not watch them run, so we missed most of the action (we were able to see them hit the finish line, so it's not like they were left completely unattended).
  
  My favorite moment was listening to Jonathan shout "I won" as he reached the end first (as he always did, being bigger than Fiona). But Fiona doesn't quite have the basics of competition down, so once she reached the end she followed Jonathan by shouting out "I won!"
  
  Jonathan tried to protest, but Fiona didn't care. And good for her, I say.

Sibling Rivalry

I've written before about how Fiona likes to pretend to be different animals. Of course, having a cat around the house means she gets to be highly specific about the feline behavior she imitates. So just as Buddy likes to be pet while he eats, when Fiona's pretending to eat like a cat she wants us to stroke her back.

Buddy doesn't seem flattered by the imitation. This morning when Fiona tried to crawl into bed between her parents, Buddy stretched himself along the bottom of the bed to try to block her.

In response, Fiona decided that rather than snuggle in between Mommy and Daddy, she'd act like a cat and curl up against our feet.

Parents normally roll their eyes when non-parents compare pet ownership to child rearing, but at our house the two activities may be moving closer together.

Pooh Bear Tops the Threatdown

The subject line says it all--the Colbert Report this week ranked Winnie-the-Pooh at Number One on the threatdown.

http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/?lnk=v&ml_video=61796

For those of you who might need the background (hi Grandma & Papa!), Colbert is a parody, so I'm not going to get too worked up for Fiona just yet.

Princess Phase

The Princess phase has begun. In the past few months, Fiona has definitely gotten interested in gender differentiation. She started by identifying the people she knows (and her favorite fictional characters) as either boys or girls. Next, she started pretending to be a mermaid during bathtime (this usually consisted of lying on her stomach and shouting out "Mommy, I'm a mermaid!").

Last month, one of the older girls at day care had a Princess Party for her birthday, and Fiona was fascinated by the Disney Princesses ring she got as a party favor (I had a feeling it would be harder to avoid Disney Princesses than it was to avoid Barney and Teletubbies). Since then, Fiona has started referring to her dresses as "princess dresses," especially when she twirls. And she started asking to wear dresses far more than she ever had before.

For Easter we gave her a toy tiara (she calls it her crown). She's been interested in wearing the dress we were saving for Easter for months; being a mercurial two-year old, she refused to wear any dress at all once the big day rolled around, instead going for a pink shirt with pink pants that reminded everybody of a bottle of pepto bismol. But dresses are definitely a good clothing buy right now... at least until she enters a tomboy phase.

Animals

Fiona has started pretending to be different animals. She started as a dinosaur--she loves to roar and chase us around the house or down the street.

Over the weekend, she started pretending to be a cat--meowing and crawling down the hall. Yesterday she added a new layer by taking a metal bowl out of the cupboard and pretending to eat out of it, just like Buddy eats out of his bowl.

Actually, a week or two ago we were busy stopping her from playing with Buddy's food (with predictable tantrums), so retrieving her own bowl is definite progress. We do, however, still have a problem with Fiona deciding her toy cat wants to have a drink out of Buddy's water dish. Two steps forward, one step back.

Magic Words

Last month Fiona went through a "please" phase. She'd learned that she could get things she wanted by saying "please" (such as a bite of her parents' breakfast) and that sometimes we wouldn't give her things until she said "please" (such as that bite of her parents' breakfast).

This led to Fiona imagining that she could get just about anything she wanted any time she wanted just by saying "please." "I want a lollipop please"; "I want a bowl please" (i.e. one of the metal kitchen bowls we let her play with); "I want to go outside please"; "I want to climb on the table please." Eventually she figured out that "please" was not a magic word designed to give her everything she wants and we're back to reminding her to say please when she asks for a bite of our breakfast.

This month is all about "I love you." When Fiona is doing something we don't want her to do (e.g. swinging a kitchen towel around so quickly that it winds up hitting us), we tell her to stop. She ignores us, and we get sterner--perhaps grabbing the towel (or similar object) to stop her swinging and telling her to look at us when we speak to her. At that point, Fiona looks whichever parent is reprimanding her in the eye and says "I love you, Daddy" (or Mommy). And then she moves in to try to get a hug, all without having owned up to or having apologized for what she's done.

We don't laugh in front of her, but the transparency of her tactics is amusing. And she usually does get a hug, albeit with a reminder that we still know what she's done ("I love you, too, Fiona, but you still can't swing that dish towel like that"). Even the dimmest parent ought to be able to figure out the machinations of a two year old.

Corrections

A few items that have been brought to my attention in recent days:

The Wonder Pet that Fiona identified as a whale is, in fact, a dolphin.

The song that we assumed our little Mozart had composed herself is, in fact, a toilet training song that they must sing at day care (once she started singing all the lyrics we realized it was a little advanced for a two-year old).

I still think events unfolded as described in this post, but according to Andrea she asked Fiona if Buddy threw the Pooh doll and Fiona replied "yes." Still a lie, but a little less diabolical.

Also Aristotle was not Belgian, the central message of Buddhism is not "every man for himself," and the London Underground is not a political movement. Perhaps this blog needs a public editor.

Dress Up

Here's a photo you won't be seeing on the web page (oh, who am I kidding, I'm hopelessly behind on getting any photos up on the web page):

Sunday night, Fiona decided she'd had enough dinner after about five minutes and headed off to play. Andrea and I continued eating and, in a moment of inexcusable parental oblivion, did not notice how quiet the apartment had become.

When we finished dinner and cleared the table back to the kitchen, we discovered Fiona in our bedroom. She had emptied one of the laundry baskets and had dressed herself in Andrea's clothes. "I'm Mommy!" she shouted, happily.

It was quite a look, and perhaps her boldest fashion choice was to wear three pairs of Andrea's dirty underwear as a necklace (that would be answer the "why you won't be seeing this on the web page" question).

Since last night we've banned access to the dirty laundry, to Fiona's chagrin (if chagrin isn't too mild a word to describe 150 decibel wailing). Andrea's given her a few old shirts to play with and this morning we didn't stop her from putting on our pajamas. We seem to have entered the dressing up in Mommy's (& occasionally Daddy's) clothes phase.

Two From Saturday

Saturday morning, around 9am

Mommy: Fiona, do you want to get dressed?
Fiona: (clutching her shirt) No, stay in pajamas all day.
Mommy: It's a nice day so Daddy's going to take you to the playground.
Fiona: (ripping off her shirt) Oh, playground! I got to get dressed!

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Saturday evening, around 7pm, Fiona plays with her babysitter, Miriam.

Fiona: Miriam, I'm tired.
Miriam: Do you want to go to bed?
Fiona: (perking up instantly and resuming play) No.