Wait For Me, Bubbles

Yia-Yia and Lauren set Lillian up with a bubble station in the backyard, so now one of the tasks of the Companions of Lillian is to keep the air filled with bubbles, while she runs around popping them with her finger.

“Bubbles pop!” she says.

Or, if the bubbles go floating off on some quick current of air, she chases after them, saying: “Wait for me, bubbles, wait for me!”

Squirrel Chasing

One of Lillian’s favorite pastimes is chasing dogs or birds or squirrels. Getting a picture of this activity is difficult as both children and animals tend to move faster than aging photographers. Lillian has not yet been successful in catching any of her targets, but she is getting craftier. Today, she attempted to coax a squirrel into her arms by offering him a bite of her cracker. However, because of last autumn’s huge acorn drop, this spring’s squirrels are fat and happy, and crackers are not quite big enough a temptation to lure them into a two-year old’s trap.

Last night, Josh reports, Lillian had her first ever nightmare. She woke up screaming in the middle of the night, and took a long time to calm down. No clue as to what caused the dream, and she was fine, if a little sleepy, during the day.

Lessons in Diplomacy

We think that if Lillian’s life journey leads her to seek a career in diplomacy, she may encounter a few roadblocks.

While she is mostly sweet and charming, when things don’t go her way (as when she is not permitted to wield 12″ chef’s knives) she sometimes engages in an activity that we southerners refer to as “pitching a fit”. This involves lying on the floor, kicking one’s legs vigorously while waving one’s arms wildly and expressing displeasure vocally — current sounds favored are guttural grunts and lion-like roars, punctuated by high-pitched, blood curdling shrieks.

In addition, she exhibits a lack of interest in linguistic precision in social situations — you might even call it a lack of sensitivity to the subtle nuances of certain words. For example, she refers to most other children she meets as “babies”, whether or not they are younger than she is.

A couple of days ago at Southside Place’s delightful Fire Truck Park, Lillian was happily climbing and playing on the ladders and decks and slides. Also playing there were three boys, aged four or so, clearly buddies and having a high old time. When they noticed Lillian, they laughed and sniggered and did the sorts of things that four year old boys do to demonstrate to two year old girls their vastly superior wisdom and experience of the world. When Lillian noticed them, she smiled one of her most disarming smiles, pointed at them and said (loudly enough for their mothers to hear) “Cute babies!” The young fellows were stunned to silence, and slunk off to the comfort of their mothers’ arms.

Then, yesterday, at the JCC playground, two girls, aged around three, came out with their mother to play. Lillian said, “Hi, babies!”

“We’re not babies, ” they replied, a bit indignantly.

I suggested brightly that they were all big girls. Lillian tried that phrase out and it appeared that peace and goodwill would prevail, and all three spent some time running and sliding.

Then the other two girls ran ahead of Lillian.

“Wait for me, babies, wait for me!”

“Mama, she called us babies and we are bigger than she is!” wailed one of the girls. “I’m no baby!” cried the other.

“I’m coming, babies, wait for me!” The other girls ran to their mom, shaking with fury.

Fortunately, it was time for us to leave, though such is the power of an ill-chosen word that I fear we left two traumatized three year olds in our wake, and we may yet receive a stern note of protest from their ambassador.

Flowers and Boots

A few months ago, Lillian’s NaNa, Peggy Denby, knowing Lillian’s love of jumping in puddles, pools and fountains, got her some rubber boots. Every now and then, whether it’s wet or not, Lillian decides that the boots need to be worn. Today was such a day.

She wore them while wandering around the back yard, pausing from time to time to admire her reflection in the window glass (“Look [though when she says it, it sounds more like ‘Yook’],” she would say, “boots”). Then it was off to chase butterflies and climb ladders.

At one point, she stopped to admire some wild flowers growing in the yard (some might call them “weeds”), and she plucked a few and brought them to her grandfather. “Yook,” she said, “Flowers.”

Trimmed

Usually, getting a picture of Lillian is pretty easy, unless you say something like “hey, Lilz, let me take a picture of your new haircut!” The knee-jerk two-year old response is “no!” and so you end up with a picture like the one above. Her hair doesn’t get in her eyes now, but I suspect the rebel in her was just as happy to look like a wild thing.

Peggy and Keith were here watching Lilz on Saturday while Josh ran some errands. Peggy was sitting and reading Lillian one of her books. Keith stepped out of the living for a few minutes and Peggy got up to drink some of the tea Josh had made for them before he left (they had placed it on a high shelf to prevent a Lillian-inspired disaster). Lili was sitting in the chair like a little angel when Peggy got up. She got her sip of tea, then turned around: Lillian was doing a head stand in the chair with her heels hooked over the top of the chair. She didn’t notice that Peggy saw her, so Peggy grabbed her camera (also placed on a high shelf as a hedge against disaster) and put it behind her back to keep Lillian from seeing it. Peggy walked a little closer while Lillian stayed in her head stand, but as soon as Peggy pulled out the camera to snap a picture Lillian flopped down on the chair and gestured with her hand and said something (Peggy think it might have been something about “paparazzi not welcome”). Peggy says she had the sweetest look of innocence on that cute little face. Peggy suspects that Lillian didn’t want any evidence of a behavior that might have been banned by the other person who lives in Lillian’s apartment. We won’t tell Josh if you don’t.

Haircut

Lillian’s hair is growing quickly; after her dad drops her off in the morning, her Yia-Yia has been brushing it and putting in bands and barrettes in an attempt to control it. These stay in for as long as 20 minutes after Yia-Yia leaves in the morning, and grandpa is completely hopeless at doing anything about it.

So, Yia-Yia took Lillian this afternoon to the beauty parlor and got her hair trimmed.

Lillian viewed the entire process with deep suspicion.

Baseball Girl

Lillian’s cousin Samuli lives in Finland most of the year, but comes with his folks to Houston in the summer most every year. (Some people think they are a little nuts: summer is wonderfully pleasant in Finland, with mild temperatures and 20 hours of daylight; about the best you can say about Houston in the summer is that we have very good air conditioners).

Ten or twelve years ago, when he was small, we started going to Astros games. Samuli has developed into something of an expert on baseball and is a student of the game, and plays on a Finnish youth team, traveling sometimes to Sweden or Estonia for games — although Finland is not yet considered one of the great powers in world baseball (kind of like the Astros, when you think about it).

In the bedroom where he sleeps when he is in Houston, he has stashed some baseball equipment to use when he’s here — some balls, bats and helmets (plus some memorabilia — a Craig Biggio bobblehead, a commemorative Coors beer baseball bat bottle, and so on). Lillian found the equipment stash, and appears ready to play ball. When Samuli gets here this summer, we’ll take Lillian with us to a game. With the way the Astros are playing, we shouldn’t have any trouble getting seats.

Lillian and Her NaNa

It’s always a big day when Lillian gets to spend time with NaNa and PawPaw — Peggy and Keith Denby.

TGIF

When Lillian woke up from her nap this afternoon, she woke up on the wrong side of grouchy in full-blown tantrum territory. She stretched out on the floor and spent a good half hour exercising her lungs and kicking holes in the air. Since she has a spring cold, she also contributed generously to the local supply of nasal snot.

When she was done, she went into the backyard, and, just as she did, to her immense relief, her Yia-Yia got home. So she got to sit with her grandmother and talk it all out, while eating fruit snacks and drinking lemonade. By the time her dad came to get her, she was back to her usual sunny self, and she took her dad over to her climbing rope and counted the number of knots in it for him.

Counting is a new, big thing for Lilz: yesterday, as she and her dad drove home, they stopped for a train. “How many train cars are there, Lillian?” he asked. She immediately started counting them. Sometimes, she counts as high as ten. Sometimes, as she did when counting train cars, she gets to five and starts over.

If only we could make as much progress on toilet training as on arithmetic…

Spring Rain

A late cold front blew into Houston today, dropping temperatures 20 degrees in a couple of hours, and sprinkling rain over our favorite playgrounds. Certain small girls think rain and cold need investigation, and so we visited the pool in the JCC’s Mystic Garden while one of her great-grandmothers did her physical therapy.

Lillian helpfully pulled leaves (“leaves wet,” she observed) and bamboo shoots (“bamboo wet,” she noted) and rocks (“rocks wet,” she opined) from the edge of the pool (“water wet,” she concluded). She turned her face to the sky and, as the raindrops splashed on her face, announced that the rain, too, was wet.