Better Video

This video is a bit more fun than the last one.

I had noted a number of friends of mine who post on facebook that their 2 and 3-year-olds have been reading them bedtime stories. Yes, this is a wonderful accomplishment (whether memorized or actual reading, it IS reading, and therefore pretty cool).

But I couldn't leave well enough alone and just had to share how Clara reads a book.


Sorry it's a little long. If you're not that into Clara, by all means, don't watch.

But if you're not all that into Clara, why would you bother to read these posts in the first place?

Probably Shouldn't Post This, But . . .

This is probably one of those things I shouldn't post, but I just can't help myself.

Note: if you can't stand seeing/listening to crying children DO NOT play the following video.


In case you didn't catch it, Clara is expressing her dismay that we're not letting her watch any more Top Gear. (It was time for bed.)

Yep, we're bad parents and let our kid watch TV (OK, YouTube).

The F1 season started yesterday, so Mario of course had to watch the highlights of the race, courtesy of YouTube. Alas, we no longer have cable. Can't say I'm broken up about this, as I do not miss the races at 6am. But Mario does. Thank goodness for the magic of YouTube.

After the race, he and Clara still had not gotten their full car fix, so he pulled up an episode of the BBC's Top Gear. (Those of you in Mexico, yes, I have heard your ire about the show. We agree. But we love Top Gear anyway. Plus, it gave Mastretta plenty of free publicity.) Despite the manifold similarities I note between myself and Clara, it can't be denied that she's pretty "into" vehicles of any kind, race cars in particular.

Hence, the angst when we told her it was time for bed.

Funny thing, though. I don't remember actually telling her that we were watching Top Gear. Certainly, the show itself mentioned its name enough, and Mario and I no doubt said the name in passing.

And Clara certainly internalized it. As soon as we began to understand her, it became clear that she was shouting, "no more Top Gear! No more Top Gear!" And in Clara-ese, that means that she's really sad she didn't get to see any more.

Do you think that if we sent this video to Top Gear we'd get free tickets to the show?

March Mayhem

Are you familiar with the book, Harold and the Purple Crayon?

Today we had Clara and the Blue Crayon.

I was talking to my parents on the phone when Clara waltzed down the hall, dragging a blue crayon along the white wall at her side. Immediately, I got loud, exclaiming, "Clara--we DO NOT draw on the walls!" and then took the crayon away. I examined the wall in the living room where I caught her and as there was no blue on it, I wasn't too concerned. Between taking the crayon away, speaking sternly, and in a voice louder than usual, I was sure Clara would be on the floor, sobbing. She doesn't take chastisement well. However, she just toddled contentedly off to Patty's room.

Why? She must have known that she deserved real punishment.

After I got off the phone with my parents, I went to see what she and Patty were up to. On the way, I glanced at the hallway wall and noticed a distinct blue line, which apparently had its origin with some rather large circles by the door to Patty's room. Blast. It had been about an hour since I caught her with the crayon. I tend to think of two-year-olds like puppies, and if much time elapses between the crime taking place and getting caught, I assume that they have very little memory of having caused any mayhem.

However, she is two. Her memory is getting longer. And even at two, she does need to take some responsibility for her actions.

So I got a bucket of water, a sponge, and two small scrub pads so Clara and I could both clean the wall. Once I took away the water, realizing that very little is necessary for cleaning a wall painted with water-soluable paint, she chore suddenly turned into punishment for Clara. Excellent. That was my point.

Or, better said, washing the wall wasn't quite as much fun without water. But she stuck with it to the end.

Not that her attempts at scrubbing really got much blue off (I had to keep reminding her to stick to scrubbing the blue line, not just whatever parts of the wall struck her fancy), but she did "help" to clean up her mess.

And maybe next week when we repaint the wall, she'll help with that, too. It needed to be done. I was just hoping we could put off the painting for a few more months. D'oh!

**************************************************************************

On a side note, after initially noticing the blue wall I took a moment to turn off the laundry machine and opened the machine door, realizing that I needed to go to the bathroom before I put the clothes in the basket to hang on the line. So I left the clothes in the machine while I went and did my business. When I returned to the laundry room, Clara already had half of her clothes unloaded and in the basket!

So, now that she's getting bigger and giving me more grey hairs with new hijinks (OK, this is the first time), she's also getting more independent, accepting more responsibility, and actually being useful! That part I can get used to. Unfortunately, I realize that it all goes hand in hand with being able to cause more mayhem.

So it is. *sigh*

Fork!

Clara's getting pretty good when it comes to works for her utensils. She particularly likes talking about forks.

Except that's not how she pronounces it. Think of another 4-letter word that starts with F.

A REALLY inappropriate word that begins with F.

Yep, Clara's new favorite word.

She'll get all excited about her utensils, and chatter away so the entire neighborhood can hear, "fork, fork . . . fork . . . FORK!" Thank goodness the neighbors don't know English.

But yesterday she decided that she can be all-opportunity inappropriate.

We were eating spaghetti and she had accidentally dropped some on her boots. She says boots perfectly well. I don't know if she was trying out her Spanish or saying "shoe" instead, but she was really upset about it and, using this new word, I couldn't figure out what she wanted.

Because, instead of "bota", she was crying about "puta". (Not quite as offensive as the f-bomb in English, but almost!) So, imagine if you will, in the most pathetic two-year-old voice, getting increasingly desperate for me to wipe the spaghetti off of her boots.

"Puta . . . puta . . . puta, puta--PUUUUUU-TAAAAA!"

Yep, she'll find a way to offend everyone at Danyel and Cesar's wedding next weekend.

Thank goodness she's so stinkin' cute.

Go to Sleep, Kid

For at least the last month (and off and on since . . . well, longer than I can remember), Clara has made it a nighttime routine of talking to herself for around an hour before she falls asleep. It doesn't matter if she goes to sleep at her normal bedtime, or if we get her to bed a bit late. Last week, when it was pretty late, I still heard her going full-steam at quarter to ten.

Good heavens--go to sleep, Clara!

Generally, we just ignore her, as she always does fall asleep, sooner or later.

This week, I borrowed my friend's "Touchpoints" book, by Dr. T Berry Brazelton. On his tiny little section about two-year-olds, he mentioned this phenomenon of kids talking themselves to sleep. Some well-known researchers recorded a number of kids' monologues between 20 months and three years. After listening to hundreds of hours' worth of toddler babble, they were able to make sense of it and noticed that most kids needed to talk to themselves, rehashing their day, in order to put their world right and fall asleep. Basically, they talk to themselves about their day, focusing on the parts they enjoyed and the parts that upset them.

Huh.

I had a feeling that it helped her fall asleep, or at least expend the last of her energies, but she's really making sense of her day? Wow.

I'm glad someone understands what she's saying!

But if she's still babbling away past nine o'clock, she's still going to get a loud, "GO TO SLEEP, CLARA!"

New Things

I've been noticing a couple new obsessions with Clara, and I wanted to write them down and share before they got old (or she drops them entirely).

• She loves listening to the traffic, especially those with either bigger or smaller engines than regular cars (in her words, "vrrrrr"). She can now identify and tries to say motorcycle [mo-TOR], and still gets excited about trucks.
  

• Despite that, her new favorite word is "stuck". It's usually either pronounced "duck" or "'tuck". We first started playing a game where I'd trap her hand under my leg. But now anything that she can't get easily is quickly decided to be "duck".
  

• We live just a block away from our church, so when the bells ring twice a day, we hear them. The evening bells get her attention, as we're usually eating at 6:30 and 7 when they go off. When she pointed out the door towards the bells, I let her know that they meant that there would be mass soon. "Do you want to go to mass?" She shook her head no. Then she said, "ni-night!" Right! The bells do ring right around the time of your 7 o'clock bedtime! What a sharp kid!
  

Birthday!

Below is a video we took on Clara's birthday, two weeks ago.

Of course, we taught her how to show her two fingers when someone asks her how old she is, and with prompting she'll happily say that she's either two or dos (depending on the prompt).