Tassie one-liners

A few recent utterances have made us chuckle:

• Tasman was pouting the other day in the bathroom after her bath. She turned around and looked at herself in the mirror. Upon observing the expression on her own face, she asked, "What's the matter, Tasman?"
• Kirsti has been pretty stressed the last few weeks due to a million things going on all at once. She told Tasman one day, "Mommy is too busy." Tasman made some effort to mimic this sentence, so Kirsti said it again. "Mommy is . . ." Tasman repeated, "Mommy is . . ." Kirsti finished the sentence, ". . . too busy." Then Tasman said, "too busy." At this point, Tasman paused, as if struck by some keen insight, and then added, "One busy. Two busy."
• We recently hung a picture of Jesus on the wall behind our couch. Tasman came up to me and asked, "Is that Jesus?" "Yes," I responded. Then Tasman declared, "Jesus is funny!"
  

Little witch

Here are the pictures of Tas in her Halloween costume. I took the pictures today, two weeks after Halloween, because it just didn't work out on the 31st. It got too dark too fast. I'm sure it doesn't matter to anyone, but I'm a purist, so it sort of bugs me.

Children can be difficult to take pictures of, and Tas is no exception. These are the best we could do. I do have one of her jumping off of a covering of a utility pipe that comes up out of the ground. It's a funny picture because it captures her feet just leaving the ground, but her head is completely out of the frame. I thought about posting it, but there really isn't much to see.

It was too warm outside today. I don't know about Tasman, but I was anxious to go back in because it was a little hot in the sun. November in San Diego is great! I hope it is not too hot next week though—cooking a turkey for several hours when it's already 80 outside is not fun. Hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving!

Stupid Tassie tricks

I think my brother Devin taught this to her when he was here visiting over the summer. If you say "Gangsta Tas", she strikes this pose.

Two!

Well, it's a belated birthday post. Tasman turned 2 two weeks ago. I can't believe it has been two years already. I still feel like I'm getting used to the new pace of life. :)

We were not planning on doing anything special, but Sean was able to be home since Miramar canceled class for a week. So, we planned a last-minute party and invited Scott and Vanessa Jackson. We had pizza and pasta and salad for dinner and then critter cupcakes for dessert. Tas opened presents enthusiastically. Her favorite was, of course, the snazzy tricycle from Granna and Grandpa. We had to go for a ride outside in the dark, which Tas loved until we told her it was time to go in and then she fell apart. I'm sure the neighbors enjoyed Tasman screaming, "I need to ride the bike!" as we carried her into the house. All in all, it was a fun birthday.

We have now officially entered the "terrible two's". Tasman was already starting to exhibit some of the "terrible two" behaviors, but I honestly think that her bossiness got worse and her opinions stronger the week after her birthday. :) She's a great kid and we love her.

Give us another week - maybe we'll get around to posting up some Halloween pictures.

Fires

I suspect that, by now, everyone knows that we were largely unaffected by the fires here in San Diego. One of the big fires is quite a ways north of us, and the other big one is far to the south. They did evacuate the Scripps Ranch area on Monday, just on the other side of Interstate 15 from where we are located (Mira Mesa), but we didn't need to leave. Those evacuations near us were precautionary at any rate; the fires weren't really an imminent threat to that community. The Scripps Ranch folks were back in their homes later on Tuesday.

The authorities learned a lot since the Cedar fire in 2003. They decided to open a ton of evacuation centers and move as many people out of their homes as was reasonable. By doing so, they avoided what could have been a tremendous number of injuries or deaths and freed up resources to defend properties and structures.

So we're out of danger. Thanks to everyone for your concerns, your thoughts, and your prayers. Out hearts go out to those who have lost their homes and we're truly grateful that we're safe.

The Tasman songbook

Here are some of the songs Tasman likes to sing. She usually doesn't get all the words quite right, but the tune is generally there. Anyone listening would be able to tell what she was trying to sing.

• "ABC song." You can see a video of her singing this here. This is probably her best song.
• "Itsy Bitsy Spider." She likes doing the hand motions, especially when she gets to "wash the spider out."
• "Row, Row, Row Your Boat."
• "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star." This one's funny because the last line of the song is the first, so she thinks she's starting the song over and she'll just keep singing it over and over again.
  
• "Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam." We discussed this one here on the blog a while back.
• "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes." She's getting better at the accompanying motions.
• "Little Bunny Foo Foo". She sings very little of this, but she gets really enthusiastic when it comes time for "bopping them on the head".
• "Five Little Monkeys." Meme taught her this one. (Meme—pronounced "may-may"—is what she calls Kirsti's mom.)
  

There's a fair number of songs she sings from TV shows.

• "Elmo's World."
  
• "Backyardigans." In addition to the main theme, she can sing just about any of the songs they sing on this show. In particular, she likes "Racing Day", "Treasure", "Secret Agents", "Surf's Up", "Stomp, Stomp, Stomp", "Mysterious, Very Mysterious", and "We're Going to Mars".
• "Blue's Clues." She'll sing along to the two different theme songs the show has had, and all the other songs they sing regularly.
  
• "Franklin."
• "Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!"
• "Jack's Big Music Show." She also likes to sing a song from one of the episodes that goes "Hop, hop, hop. Stomp, stomp, stomp. Flap, Flap. Coo coo ca choo."
  

Our favorite is when she makes up songs on request. We'll say, "Tas, can you sing a song about giraffes?" And then she'll launch into an improvised song about giraffes.

The power of suggestion

It doesn't seem that I blog because I have one story about Tasman, like Sean does. I usually think, "I should blog about that" a number of times in the day when she does something that I think is funny. In general I think she's a really delightful kid. Probably all kids are, really. It is fun to see how a person learns and interprets the world. Anyhow, this is what Tasman is up to these days.

She has learned how to jump, so every now and then it is her preferred method of traveling. It's not a terribly efficient way to move, but it is fun to watch her jump just because she can. Tasman especially likes to jump in her room before bed. She'll jump from the bathroom door after her bath over to the changing table to put on her pajamas and then she jumps over to daddy to read a book. I'm sure the neighbors love it. We should send them a link to this blog so they'll know what that thumping noise is every night.

Tas also has started to talk along with Backyardigans episodes she's familiar with. She'll do the actions too. So, it's the mostly unintelligible, one-woman variety show in our living room every day. She does better with the songs. Yesterday she jabbered along with Pablo while he talked about surfing and wiping out and then sang "Surf's up. Ho Daddy!" While dancing around the room. She gets the sentence lengths and some of the words right, so clearly she has some memory for the way the episode goes. It's amusing.

She also mutters along with Sean or I as we say her nightly prayers. We have a hard time not chuckling. In an effort to reinforce her good behavior, we started praising her enthusiastically for being reverent if she keeps her arms folded and her eyes closed during the prayer. Well, it just didn't take very long before she was jumping up after the "amen", clapping exuberantly and saying, "Yay! Nana so reverent!" She obviously has a healthy sense of accomplishment.

My favorite new Tas-ism though, is what inspires the title of this entry. In the last 2 weeks Tasman has started saying, "alright." The word itself is not as funny as the way she uses it. I think all parents probably do a fair amount of parroting what their child says since the child won't say the word exactly the right way and repeating it back is a way to both model the correct pronunciation and make sure that you've really understood what the kid wants. Well, Tasman has taken up saying "alright" every time I ask her a yes/no question she wants to respond affirmatively to. It usually goes something like this:
Tasman will say: "Wanna watch Bardans?" (everything is a question still - even when she's just making a statement and Bardans is how she now says Backyardigans.)
I'll say (to confirm): "You want to watch Backyardigans?"
And in her sweet little voice Tasman will respond: "awright."

This exchange always makes it seem that whatever it is she's now going to do is my suggestion. I doubt very much that Tasman will be a wishy-washy person. After all, she comes from such opinionated and stubborn parents. Let's hope the "alright" is a sign of flexibility in her personality that allows her to go with the flow. If she can learn that now, she'll be way better off than her uptight mom.

Once I get started I seem to think of lots of other teeny things she does that make me laugh, but to spare everyone a novel, I'll have to wait until next time. I will post some pictures - because I love looking at pictures. I was going through some of our old photos this morning and found these of Tas taken this time last year. She grew up so fast! Guess that's what happens.

A package from Granna

This morning, the doorbell rang. It was the FedEx guy with a package addressed to Tasman from her Granna (AKA, my mom). Tassie eyed the box with anxious anticipation while I found some scissors. After I sliced through the tape, she threw open the flaps and . . . what a sight to behold! A box full of Styrofoam peanuts!

"Ooooh." Tas was in heaven. She picked up just one or two and turned them over in her hands. She cautiously applied some pressure to one until it snapped. She squealed with delight.

I encouraged her to go a little deeper into the box. She moved a few peanuts off to the side, just to find more peanuts underneath. She was happy just to have a whole box of Styrofoam peanuts, but I knew there was something a little deeper.

"Keep going," I urged. Tasman seemed to get the idea, because now she was sweeping large quantities of peanuts out of the box and onto the floor. A tiny patch of plastic appeared. "Tas, do you see the bag?" Within seconds, every last peanut was deposited on the living room floor, exposing a large grocery sack. She tore open the sack and discovered that five books were inside.

Oh, this is the most exciting it has been in a while. This definitely beats watching Backyardigans. We turned off the TV and Tas started flipping through the books, naming the various animals and other objects on each page. A few books down in the pile was a book called A Day in the Life of a Princess. Attached to the side of the book was a magic wand, and attached to the back cover was a box in which we found a crown and a little tutu-like skirt. I quickly put the skirt on her and got the crown to fit around her head. Meanwhile, she discovered that the wand made a twinkly sound when she waved it.

So for the rest of the day, Tas has been a pretty princess. We made a little video to show her in the outfit and to document the mess in our living room. She decided to sing a little, so you also can see her sing her ABC's. (What a ham!)

Thanks, Granna!

Time out update

Well, we're seeing some interesting results from our institution of "time out" for Tasman. (Not to be confused with "Time out for women". Apparently, they now have "Time out for couples" too, but I digress.) At first the time outs seemed to be pretty good for helping Tas reset and get over her tantrums quicker. But one night, we were upstairs getting ready to put her to bed and she threw a tantrum. We threatened her with time out, but she continued acting out. So we hauled her downstairs, set up the time out box, turned on the timer, and put her in. She lied down, face down, in the middle of the time out box, and cried. When the minute was up, we picked her up out of the box, but she flailed and thrashed around even more, screaming even louder than before, "WAN LIE DOWN TIME OUT!!!" Apparently, she wanted to go back in. Uh, I don't think that makes a very good punishment if she wants to be there.

So we had our concerns about the efficacy of the time out box, but it turns out that that night was an isolated incident. In fact, it's starting to look like the threat of time out might actually be a slight deterrent, which I believe is supposed to be the point of time out anyway. Now when she starts getting whiny—oh, how I hate the whining!—we say, "Do you need a time out?" This is usually enough for her to calm down a bit, stick out her lower lip a bit, and respond, "No." We really haven't needed to use it but once or twice in the last week. So things may be looking up for now.

Unbridled enthusiasm

Well, mostly I haven't contributed to the blog because Sean and I had to find time to sit down together so he could show me how to post pictures. We managed to do that last week and I've still struggled to find time to post, but right now I'm in-between classes, so I have a few days of freedom!

I don't have a specific Tasman anecdote, but this week I have been laughing about her communication, which has suddenly become very loud and very enthusiastic. She yells, "Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!" and when I turn my attention to her, she yells a lengthy sentence with all the right intonations and fluctuations, but no intelligible words. She's been only partly intelligible for some time, but lately it seems that words we used to understand are becoming less understandable as she strings them together in context with a lot of other gibberish sounds. She sings the opening song of "The Backyardigans" this way. She gets some sounds right and most sounds wrong, but she's singing loud and clear.

Our new favorite is a saying from Nick Jr's new show "Yo Gabba Gabba" which I think looks too weird to watch, but since we watch other Nick Jr. shows, she's seen some advertisements which apparently taught her "I tried it. I like it." Tasman will say both parts, but will also complete the thought. If we say, "I tried it." She'll yell "I LIKE IIIIIT!"

Tasman likes to make a slide out of everything, mommy's legs, the neighbor's stairs, the 3 inch drop from the couch to the ottoman. We always know what she's doing because she narrates: "sliiiiide" as she scoots her way down. Last week she started scooting down Sean's legs since he had them extended onto the foot rest while he sat in the chair. Instead of saying "slide" she said, "ride the bus, ride the bus." I suppose my short legs make a good slide, but when you've got miles of leg available, a faster form of transportation is in order.

Tas has gone to bed now. She'll go to sleep in another hour after she runs a marathon up there and perhaps has a really lengthy conversation with her teddy bear at full volume in unintelligible tones.

Here are some of my favorite recent pictures of her. The first is Tas wearing swim goggles. The next is Tasman's attempt at putting on her pajamas. She had the shirt around her hips. I guess her head was just too big to get all the way through the shorts.

Time out

Kirsti and I finally decided to start implementing "time outs" for Tasman. We used four pieces of a kiddie barrier that we own to create a little time out box that sits in our front entry. We purchased an oven timer from Target. When Tassie acts out we ask her if she wants a time out, and since this usually just makes her more angry, she usually ends up in time out one way or another. For now we put her in there for one minute, during which she kicks and screams and carries on. Nevertheless, when the timer goes off, she usually lets us pick her up and give her hugs. Only a few times have we needed to put her back into time out immediately after taking her out. So hopefully this will be pretty effective. And just in the nick of time too! Her tantrums are just starting to get nasty. Welcome to the terrible twos! (And she still has over a month until she's even two.)

We couldn't make this crap up!

Well, we experienced a first today. Tasman tried to eat her own poo. Too much information, you say? You bet! Nevertheless, I feel that it's my duty to report this kind of thing. (Okay, I promise, that's the last puerile poop joke.)

From time to time, Tasman gets a bit of diaper rash, like all kids do, I suppose. When she has a particularly bad one that lingers, we give her some "naked time". Oh, how she loves naked time! While she's getting a bath from Mommy, Daddy is downstairs laying out old towels all over the floor of the living room. Then we bring her down and let her streak around the room with wild abandon. We don't worry too much about her bodily functions during naked time; that's what the towels are for.

So here we are watching "Last Comic Standing" from last week on the DVR, and suddenly Kirsti shrieks. I look over in time to see Tasman quickly drop a—how shall I put this?—"Lincoln log" that she had just been holding in her hand. Neither of us had witnessed the original deposit of said stool. Kirsti just happened to look down as Tasman picked it up to examine it and decide if she thought it tasted yummy. It all happened so quickly that Kirsti couldn't tell if Tasman had managed to swallow anything.

Of course, we were immediately concerned about the effect of ingesting fecal matter. Kirsti asked me to look it up on the internet. I opened up Google, but then wisely paused for a moment to consider the potential ramifications of conducting a search involving people eating poo. I finally decided that if I included the word "toddlers", I was less likely to get . . . well, you get the idea. So in my Google search bar I started typing "toddlers" and then "eating". The Google search bar, as some of you might know, takes what you type and immediately starts to offer suggestions for common search queries similar to your own. Not surprisingly, "toddlers eating habits" comes up first, but I was shocked to see that "toddlers eating feces" is second and "toddlers eating poop" is fourth. Apparently, this is a more common problem than I expected.

Unfortunately, none of the first few hits gave us much useful information. I did learn the word "coprophagy", but that didn't really help. On the plus side, we came across a site that sells the T-shirt seen in the image above. I can't imagine what kind of parent would put their kid in it, but it's hilarious anyway.

In the end, we just brushed her teeth as well as we could and put her to bed. I suppose I'll find out tomorrow if there are any problems. It could be worse: I remember not too long ago watching an episode of "Nanny 911" that featured a three-year-old who liked to stick her hand down the back of her diaper, and then fling her poo all over the house. At least Tas didn't try to throw it at us, right?

Life interferes

You may have noticed that it's been a week and a half since our last post. Mind you, I don't expect that people are obsessively checking this site every few minutes. Well, there may be some grandparents who are . . .

The fall semester just started at Miramar College, so I've been super-busy trying to get course materials together. My precalculus class hasn't been so bad since I taught essentially the same course last fall. But I'm teaching statistics for the first time, so that has taken a lot more time and effort. In general, it takes more effort to teach statistics since I have to prepare data sets for classroom analysis, whereas for "normal" math classes like precalculus and calculus, I can basically come up with most of my examples off the top of my head. (It doesn't make much difference if I plot the line y = 2x - 3 or the line y = 3x + 5.)

Kirsti has been pretty busy too; other than the inaugural blog, she hasn't been able to post at all. Perhaps she can pick up some of my slack. :)

Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam

So I have this theory.

Everywhere I have ever been to church and listened to primary children singing, "Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam," the children always shout the last syllable: "Jesus wants me for a sun-BEAM." The really hyperactive ones tend to hop out of their chairs too. I wondered how it could be that all the primary children across the country knew that they should do this. Sure, once it's established somewhere, the younger kids learn it from the older kids, and then there's no stopping it. It's too insidious, too addictive. But some kid had to be the first to do it.

I was even more surprised when I was in Spain on my mission and I learned that Spanish children knew how to do it: "Cristo me manda que bri-LLE."

Given the universality of this custom, there is only one explanation: there is a secret cabal of primary children that travels around the world and teaches this to other primary children.

So imagine my surprise when I sang the song with Tasman the other day. After singing just one verse, she was already shouting out "BEAM" throughout the chorus. Apparently, I couldn't even protect my daughter from the secretive Sunbeam Society before age two.

Tasman counts

Tassie is learning to count. Never mind the actual number of objects she is counting; she counts the same way regardless:

Two, one, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, eighteen, EIGHTEEN!

Sometimes that latter "eighteen" is signaled by throwing her hands up in the air.

Swimming

Tasman has enjoyed going to the pool for some time now, but up until now, she refused to allow us to let go of her and let her float out in the middle of the pool. But once she gave it a shot, we couldn't get her out.

Morning requests

Tas had more than her usual number of questions and requests for me the second she woke up. Here they are in no particular order. (Translator's note: she prefaces most of her requests with "Wan . . ." which means "I want to . . . ," and her questions with "Dat . . ." which means, "Is that . . .")

• "Upanana?" (See below.)
• "Wan sit chair?" (She likes to sit in the big, black rocking chair in her room.)
• "Wan eat?"
• "Dat number?" (No, they're letters. She was pointing to the writing on the front of her teddy bear that says, "My baby bear.")
  
• "Wan read book?"
• "Wan say hi Mommy?" (No, Mommy's at work.)
  
• "Poopy diaper?" (Meaning, "I have a poopy diaper. Will you please change me?" And boy, was she right!)
  

Tas-isms

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Tasman copies a lot of what we say. But some of the funniest stuff she says she comes up with on her own:

• "Nana". This is how she says her name. This is always how she's said her name. I'll tell her, "Say 'Tas-man'." And she'll repeat it back perfectly: "Tas-man." And then I'll point to her and say, "Who's this?" "Nana." I hope she'll learn to say it correctly before she goes off to college.
  
• "Upanana". This is one of her first words and she still says it, although it's slowly being replaced by "Up pease". (Much better, methinks.) She says it when she wants to get "up", like when she wants us to pick her up, or when she wants to get up on the couch. We have no idea why she started saying it that way, but Kirsti hypothesizes that it is related to the previous word, "Nana". Ironically, she cannot say "banana".
  
• "Einstein Baby". This is a commonly requested DVD. Not Baby Einstein. Einstein Baby.
• "Nemo Fish". A more recent favorite of Tasman's is Finding Nemo. But to her, its title is definitively "Nemo Fish".

And these last two, she did copy, but we didn't try to teach them to her:

• "Ho-ney". Every once and a while, she uses this instead of "Daddy". Hmm, I wonder where she got this one.
  
• "Sean". Idem.
  

Photo experiment

We're still test driving this blog thing. Now we're experimenting to find the best way to post images. So in the name of science, here's a gratuitous photo of Tas in the bath without any of the gratuitous nudity that usually accompanies such photos.

Mimicry

So Tas is now in that phase where she copies a lot of what we say. The other day, Kirsti was making her eggs for breakfast, so she asked Tas if she wanted ham in her eggs. Tas repeated back, "Ham eggs." (Although it's more like "Ham? eggs?" since she phrases everything like a question. It's not really a question: we know it means she really does want ham in her eggs.) Then Kirsti asked her if she wanted cheese in her eggs. "Cheese eggs." These are words she already knew, so no surprises there. Then Kirsti asked if she wanted salt on her eggs. "Sal eggs." (She doesn't articulate the "t" so much.) She didn't have any clue what salt was; she had never said the word before. We joked that she just wanted whatever we suggested, so I asked, "Do you want slime in your eggs?" The inevitable response followed: "Slime eggs," while vigorously nodding her head.

My 2.718281828 cents

Math humor . . . it's not for everyone.

I suppose I will also post here from time to time. The title of our humble little blog, "Chaos Theory", is apt. Between working on my dissertation, teaching at Miramar College, playing Mr. Mom three days a week (fortunately, Tas doesn't have a woobie), serving in the branch presidency of our local Spanish branch, teaching piano lessons, tutoring, and making sure I still get my beauty sleep, things are a bit hectic. (And that's just the stuff that I have to do. I'll let Kirsti expound on her busy schedule in her own posts.)

But I suppose if you're reading this blog, you are far less interested in Kirsti and me than you are in Tasman, so we'll try to talk about her most of the time.

Life is good!

Inaugural Blog

I'm not sure how well this blogging will go, but I thought this might be a good way to keep everyone up to speed with Tas. It may serve as a sanctioned forum for my opinion as well, but no worries - I don't really have very many opinions. :)

Hopefully any efforts we make to post information here will help you keep up with us if you want to. Actually if it helps us keep up with us, it'll have been a good thing.