Cute things RUS does

Continuing in the birthday spirit and posting a lot about RUS, here are some cute things he has been doing lately.

1) He sings "Ring Around the Rosy" but he substitutes R's full name in the first line, so that instead of "Ring around the rosy" he sings "Ring around the R."

2) When he's upset with you (for example, you tell him he can't have more of something or that something is not part of dinner) he kicks off his shoes as if to say, "FINE, TAKE THAT!"

3) Actual dinner conversation tonight:
R to J: "RUS and I need to tell you a story. RUS, start!"
RUS: "Unce on uh time uh uh a in-cess"
R: Tells long convoluted story J and I can't readily reproduce here. "RUS, your turn!"
RUS: "And the in-cess went nigh-nigh."
R: "They woke up and went out in the field. RUS say something about them going in the field."
RUS: "nigh-nigh!"
R: "They're going to nap in the field!"
RUS: "NIGH NIGH!!!!!"

Tomorrow is RUS's Birthday

Over the last few weeks we've been talking with RUS about his birthday. He's in denial that he's going to be 2.

If you tell him his birthday is coming up, he says, "NOOOOOOO!"

If you say, "Are you going to be TWO on your birthday?" he very firmly and adamantly tells you, "ONE!"

If you persist in telling him he's going to be two and try to get him excited about it, he will tell you, "NO! ONE, MOMMY, ONE!"

On another note, when his daycare teachers asked him what he was going to bring for his birthday, he said, "POTPIE!"

Hmm. Probably not potpie. But he didn't stop talking about potpie so J made him potpie tonight as his birthday meal (since I won't be home tomorrow until after he's already in bed). He ate more dinner than I've seen him eat in a long, long time. He likes potpie.

I hope he won't be too disappointed when his class gets donuts instead of potpie tomorrow.

"I Heard a Z"

So R usually prefers to go by her full name, but we often call her by her nickname, and she goes back and forth as to what she signs on letters and cards to family and friends.

This evening, we were working on a Halloween card for Grandma and she says, "I don't like it when people call me [nickname]. I like when people call me [full name]."

I said, "That's totally fine. We'll call you [full name]."

Then she says, "I don't want to write [full name]. Can you tell me the letters in [nickname]?"

Mind, she knows the letters in her nickname, but I told her anyway just because.

Then she writes it, with a Z right in the middle.

I looked at it and she looked at me and said, "I heard a Z, so I wrote a Z in there."

I am SO PROUD of her!!!!

R's Chocolate Bar Cake

I'm having a neighbor over who just adopted the sweetest, cutest, tiniest little baby -- they got word that they had been chosen to bring him home and dropped everything and went up to the hospital for his birth and then lived in a hotel for a week until they could officially, officially bring him home. Just a few weeks ago, the 30-day waiting period, during which the birth mother could still change her mind, ended, and he became legally theirs.

Anyway, she's coming over tomorrow. I made my mom's amazing streusel coffee cake to serve when she visits and R helped me (recipe at end of post, for those who are interested).

R is such a good helper. She knows how to mix and stir and clean up messes and she's just really great to work with in the kitchen.

After we were finished making the cake she wanted to make another cake for her friends. I told her no, we didn't have all the ingredients.

She insisted, "But Mommy, we only need three nuts!"

I said, "Only three nuts?"

And then she recited the following recipe for "Chocolate Bar Cake." I share it with you all here.

R's Chocolate Bar Cake
3 nuts
1 scoop of sugar
2 scoops of cream
3 chocolate bars
3 scoops baking powder
2 scoops popcorn

Directions:
1. Chop the nuts.
2. Mix everything together.
3. Cook for 50 minutes.


Grandma's Awesome Streusel-Filled Coffee Cake
3/4 C sugar
1/4 C margarine
1 egg
1/2 C milk
1 1/2 C flour
2 t baking powder
1/2 t salt

Heat oven to 375 degrees. Grease square 9x9 pan. Mix sugar, margarine, and egg together. Stir in milk. Blend dry ingredients in a separate bowl and add to wet mixture. Spread half the mixture in the pan. Sprinkle in half the streusel mixture (below). Add remaining batter and sprinkle remaining streusel on top. Bake 25-35 minutes.

Streusel mixture:
Mix together 1/2 C brown sugar, firmly packed
2 T flour
2 t cinnamon
2 T butter, melted
1/2 C chopped nuts

Dreaming

J told me this morning that last night R knocked on our bedroom door at 2:30 a.m., saying, "I have to tell you something." Turns out she had a dream:

I was on the beach with Grampie. Then Mommy and Daddy came too. And then a whale came and swept us all away. After telling about the dream she lay there, falling back asleep, and asked, "Did that happen?"

Then after she got up this morning, she talked about a different dream. We were in our bathing suits. We were all there at the beach, and then a shark came and ate us up.

J was quick to reassure her that that had not, in fact, happened.

"Write it on the blog"

While washing her hands just before bed, R says to me, "Mommy, where's the sink?"

Mind, at the same time she's saying this she is rinsing soap off of her hands, in the sink.

"Right there," I said, pointing to her hands.

Then she says, barely hiding a huge grin, "Mommy, I can't find a towel."

I said, "You know where the towel is!" and then the laugh she's scarcely holding in erupts and she laughs and laughs.

Then she says, "Write it on the blog!"

It's still going

I got reminded three times this morning alone that her name is Mary. It seems to be sticking for now.

A Rose By Any Other Name . . .

After dinner today, R announced that she wanted to be called Mary.

I asked about some other possible nicknames--does she like Rosy or Romy?

"No! I don't like Romy, that's a boy's name!"

I assured her it was not a boy's name. Especially important because the way RUS says her name it sounds kind of like a cross between Ro-ma and Ro-my, and it's awfully cute.

I asked, "Do you prefer to be called R, or something else?"

"Just Mary," she said.

Then, as an afterthought, she added, "And maybe my last name could be Cinderella."

I said, "Maybe."

But, she said, "Mommy, you can just call me Mary, okay?"

"Okay," I said.

Wrinkle, Wrinkle, Dirty Socks

R loves to sing. Loves. To. Sing.

One of her favorites is "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" which she frequently requests from us as well as sings on her own. The other day at dinner, we were talking and this song came up. Somehow, "dirty socks" got worked into the conversation--of the sort in which I exclaim, "Dirty socks! Did you just say dirty socks?!?" and R erupts into peals of laughter.

J chimes in by singing, "Wrinkle wrinkle dirty socks" and R sings along with "Put them in the washer box."

J and I immediately looked at one another with looks of amazement, and then J sang, "Hang them on the line to dry" and R said, "Put them on after dinner."

At that point R took over and said to J, "You say, 'Clean them off after dinner' and then I say, 'And squeeze grape juice on them!'"

Zombies!

Of course, R likes to tell her own stories as well. Especially when she doesn't think anyone is listening. She tells stories to her animals and babies after tucking them all into her bed and giving each one a pillow, blanket, book, and sometimes their own stuffed animal. She tells stories to herself in the car while S and I are talking to each other. On the way to Grammy and Grampy's house yesterday, she was telling a story for a long time while S and I were talking and I was catching bits and pieces of it. Particularly when she started repeating "A zooombie. A zooombie. A zooombie." I also caught something about "Oh no, the zombie is walking, going thump thump thump." and "It's going to break the house - oh no!" So I signaled to S to listen in on her story and see what she could get. At this point, R said "It's a zombie, but it doesn't look like a zombie, it looks like a big mean grinch!"

I thought it was pretty entertaining. I'm not sure S was as tickled, though.

Talking to Monsters

In the car, no matter where we are going, R always, always wants one of us to tell her a story. I almost always start my stories with "Once upon a time, there was a _________________" (insert type of character--princess, little boy, mail carrier, whatever). And I started thinking I shouldn't always focus the story on a character. I need to tell more varied kinds of stories.

So this time I started with, "Once upon a time, there was a city. It was a lovely city. There were lots of restaurants and bookstores and coffee shops . . ." (we happened to be driving down our city's main street so I was pretty much describing the places we were passing)

". . . Then one day, there was a dark cloud over the city. There was a MONSTER! Oh no! R, what do you think the people of the city should say to the monster?"

R's answer?

"Please, monster, please, monster, please, monster, go ruin a different city!"

By the Numbers

R has started to grasp the concept of using numbers to indicate how much she likes, wants, or needs something. Some recent ones:

(In the car on the way home from day care): "I'm so hungry! I'm FIFTEEN HUNGRY!"

(At night, before bed): "Mommy, I love Daddy FIFTEEN!"

J has tried to beat her at this game by mentioning infinity but I'm not sure she grasps that quite yet.

Reading Books

J loves to read R long books at night before bed. He's read her The Hobbit three times and Alice in Wonderland at least once. I started Charlotte's Web with her, but she really prefers J reading to her for the most part. We've also started Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, but she hasn't seemed to enjoy that as much as she's gotten into The Hobbit and Alice in Wonderland.

This morning, I asked her if she liked The Hobbit--I knew she did, but it had been awhile since they last finished it and I was curious what she would say. Here was her response:

"I LOVE IT!!!!! But the dragon is scary! YIKES!"

R-isms from today

(While getting dressed this morning) "Mommy, you're dragging me crazy!"

(Upon finding out J had cooked beans and rice for dinner) "Nooooooooooooo! I only like four things! Spaghetti! Macaroni and cheese! Pizza! and Candy!"

(After playing with RUS and bumping her finger). "Daddy, I hurt my finger. It's bleeding!"

J: "Okay, show me the blood."

R: "It's the red stuff" (Looks at finger). "It's bleeding on the inside!"

More Dinner Conversations with R

At dinner last night, I was making the last 3 soy nuggets for the kids. I was telling R that I would have to split one in half for RUS to see if he liked it. I told R she could have 2 and RUS could have a half. Then R pipes up with "We can both have three halfs."

My jaw dropped a bit. Of course I'd been working on some basic addition and subtraction with R, but we'd never talked about fractions or division or anything like it. I thought to myself, maybe she's just thinking through how she would split each of them up and solving the problem mentally without the nuggets themselves. It's not a hard problem, per se, but not one I would expect a 3 year old to just know how to do so quickly. Finally, my brain and mouth worked together and I asked her, "How did you know that?"

She looked up and shrugged, saying, "I guessed."

Dinner Conversation with R

R: Mommy, can I have some berry applesauce?

S: Sure, but only after you eat your dinner.

R: Noooooooooo! I want berry applesauce NOW! (cries dramatically).

S: R, you have to eat your peas and macaroni because they have important things in them that will help you grow strong. They have lots of vitamins and minerals.

R: Applesauce has Vitamin C.

S: (surprised) Yes, yes it does! How did you know that?

R: Pocha told me.

S: Pocha told you?

R: Yes.

S: How did Pocha know?

R: Just a guess.

R wrote a book!

I'm "Sick"!

So R woke up Thursday and voluntarily decided to lay down on the couch. J found her there when he got up, which is pretty unusual because typically she knocks on our bedroom door and wants us to get up with her to make breakfast. He notices she is there and calls out, "Good morning, R! C'mon, let's have some breakfast!" She doesn't move and instead says that she wants to lay there and watch a movie.

He let her watch some "Princess and the Frog." Then, a little later while I was helping her get her clothes on, she told me she was "really tired" and wanted to lay down again. At first I dismissed it as her being a little silly. And then, because she was dillydallying so much at picking out her clothes and putting them on, and because RUS had a poopy diaper, I told her I was going to go change RUS and that she had "better have her clothes on" when I got back. When I came back a few minutes later, though, she was still completely undressed, hugging her clothes, and laying on her bed. I got her dressed, but then she went over to the couch and just lay there, not even looking at anything. So we made the decision to just keep her back from school.

Good thing, because she literally did spend the whole day--until just before dinner--resting and not feeling much like doing anything. She threw up once, too.

That night, when I was reading her a story and putting her down to sleep, she says to me, "Mommy, I'm going to be sick tomorrow, too."

I said, "I don't know, you might feel better in the morning."

"No, I'm going to be sick for two days and then I'm going to feel better."

Not coincidentally, she would have gotten better just in time for the weekend.

And sure enough, she tried to pull the "I can't go to school today, I'm sick" routine again on Friday morning. I can't believe this is starting already. (For the record, she was perfectly fine and had a great day at school on Friday.)

R's review of tonight's dinner

"It's a little bit spicy but very very yummy!" (She was eating creamy cauliflower soup with brazil nut pesto.)

Sadly, it was not as big of a hit with J. I think he will be having a few bowls of cereal tonight.

Superlative

In the mornings while eating her cereal R likes to ask me and J to read everything on the box. Yesterday she had me read the back of the box several times. She points and says, "read that part," or "read ALLLLL of it" (said while waving finger around entire area of box).

Anyway, the particular cereal she was eating yesterday had a blue pop-out box with the following text on it: "It's the best of what we know . . . superlative and unsurpassed just sounded a bit like bragging."

I said to her, "Do you know what superlative means?"

She shook her head.

I said, "It's like saying 'the best' or 'the most.' When something is superlative it is the most or the best of something."

She goes, "Oh, like princesses!"

Yes, R, like princesses.