Almost Two!

Delphine is almost two! She continues to get more interesting and funny and neat, and I really can't imagine how a boring lump of a newborn will be able to compete. I will have to leave myself sticky notes to remind me to tend to the new baby.

Delphine talks a lot. Just lately she has gotten into nursery rhymes in a big way. It started with a tiny book of nursery rhymes I had from when I was a kid. The first rhyme in that book is "Baa baa black sheep", so it was christened the "Baa Baa Book". I thought it would be fun to get another rhyme book, so I got one from the library, and then it became the Baa Baa Book. After we had had it out for a week and I was thoroughly sick of it I took it back, but Delphine kept looking for it ("Baa Baa Book go?") so I had to take it out again. I may buy her a Baa Baa Book of her very own for her birthday.

She makes requests, very specific requests, when we read the Baa Baa Book. "Baa baa sheep?" "Tinkle tinkle?" "Goosey goosey?" And she makes you turn to the page with that rhyme on it, you can't fake it by reciting the rhyme on the wrong page. "Find it 'name-o'?" Lately she has learned more of the rhymes: this morning she requested "To market, to market" as follows: "To market to market, pig? Home again, home again? Jiggy jig?" I don't know what she needs us for.

She knows the whole alphabet. If you get her started with the first few letters she will recite the whole thing, in a kind of mutter. She counts to ten as follows, though: "one, two, three, seven, eight". I guess literacy comes first.

Daycare is going great. For the last couple of weeks she hasn't shed a tear when we drop her off in the morning. Last night when I went to pick her up I snuck round the corner and watched her for a while without letting her know I was there. She was sitting in one of the little toddler armchairs they have and reading a little toddler ABC book, and it was about the cutest thing ever.

I think we will try and keep her in daycare after the new baby comes. It will be nicer for her to keep up that routine, and she seems to enjoy it and get a lot of value from it. Also it will give me a couple of days a week to just hang out with the new baby and rest or whatever. We'll see.

What else? She fetches shoes. She doesn't like to give kisses. She will, on occasion, run into you headfirst and say "goat". She doesn't say "hello" to people, but she will say "byebye" after they're gone. (At first I though she was just slow, but then I realized that in order to say "bye bye" to someone who is still there, you have to anticipate them not being there soon, which is perhaps a little tricky for her tiny brain.) She knows Daddy goes to work on his bicycle. She wants to know what everyone is doing: "Daddy doing?" "Mimi doing?" "Sheep doing?" Pieces of lint or hair or other crud that is inappropriately located is picked up and offered to you with a "Booger?"