who needs english?

we have been struggling with language. luciana seems to have not realized how important language was going to be until recently. she focused on puzzles and books and dancing and finding really great hiding places for toys and not on learning words. she is getting frustrated because she can't express herself, which leads to lots of tantrums and tears. this summer we are going to work on potty training and english.

in the meantime, luciana is randomly and inexplicably learning other languages. she doesn't have english down, but who cares? she is learning sign language, french, and german!

about a week or two she started signing "more." sometimes she'll say and sign it at the same time. "more" has made life a lot easier. no more crying when she wants another helping of something and can't express that. now she can put in requests for more gogurt, more milk, more books...

over the weekend luciana brought me a number 5 from one of her puzzles and asked "what is this?" I told her that it was a "five." she said "no" and asked again "what is this?" I repeated that it was a "five." she said "no. c'est cinq." I thought I might have just misunderstood her. I held up the five and asked her what it was and she confidently repeated "c'est cinq" and walked off.

today luciana came into the kitchen where I was putting dishes away. she climbed onto her walker and got ready for a ride (she loves being pushed on her walker). she turned and looked expectantly at me and said "bitte bitte bitte." I asked her what she said and she repeated "bitte bitte bitte" and pointed with this expression on her face "like come on lady, I said please now let's go!"


edited to add: we aren't intentionally teaching her these things. I have no idea where she is picking them up!

the great blabla saga

luciana has a doll named blabla who she loves passionately. blabla is her baby and her best friend. blabla is the doll that she sleeps with every night and the one she drags around with her all day. she got blabla for her first valentine's day last year and they have pretty much been inseparable ever since.

she loves blabla so much that she was blabla for halloween.


after I put them in bed at night, luciana will lie awake talking to blabla about everything she did at school and all of the trouble the two of them will get into together tomorrow.

since blabla comes everywhere with her, blabla had to come to the zoo a few weekends ago to hang out with luciana. blabla and luciana saw the polar bear and the seals, they played in the playground, and explored the trails.


on the drive home I went to hand blabla to luciana for naptime only to discover that blabla wasn't there! we had left blabla behind with the animals.


when we got home I called the zoo, they said they'd keep an eye out, and I ordered a new blabla, but it was saturday and she wouldn't arrive until wednesday. we settled down for a very rough couple of days, but the next morning made it clear that blabla was necessary. luciana hadn't seemed too concerned when I put her to bed saturday night, but when she awoke sunday morning and there was still no blabla, she was inconsolable. screaming, crying, flailing on the floor, lashing out at us.

nana, aka the greatest grandmother ever, said that I should call the zoo back just to see if they had found blabla. and they had! so we piled into the car for the hour and a half drive to the zoo. luckily luciana fell asleep in the car, waking up just in time to be reunited with blabla, who had some leaves and grass on her, but otherwise looked like herself.

even though we had been reunited with blabla I didn't cancel the replacement order. having lost blabla once, I was not risking the happiness of our family again.

the new blabla came and I decided to switch off. it worked fine and I didn't think she noticed the change.


(the old blabla is the long skinny one and the new blabla is the short round one--luciana has a habit of pulling blabla out through the bars of the crib by her hair which stretches the poor doll out.)

and then a couple of days ago, I had to pack the diaper bag for luciana to spend the day out of town with her grandparents dropping the great-grandparents off at the airport. I put the old blabla in the bag, figuring that this way luciana would have her and I wouldn't have to worry about remembering her in the morning. I got the diaper bag all packed and ready to go and left it by the basement door.

I dropped luciana off at her grandparents the next morning and was showing my mom where everything in the diaper bag was when I realized that blabla wasn't in there. I was sure I had put her in, but she was missing. I figured either I hadn't actually remembered her or luciana had taken her out of the diaper bag. my parents, remembering all too well the blabla-less day, decided to swing by and pick her up on their way out of town.

my dad ran in to find blabla and discovered the two blablas lying on the floor in the family/playroom right next to each other.

luciana apparently figured out that there are two blablas and wanted us to know that she had discovered the truth. she doesn't seem to mind, she just wanted us to know.

the wannabe daycare thief

luciana and I have the longest daycare pickups imaginable. all of the other parents come in, grab their kids, and go. most days a couple of kids are successfully picked up while I am still trying to get my kid to leave. it isn't that she doesn't want to leave or that she isn't happy to see me. rather, she takes ages trying to figure out how to steal the daycare toys.

yes, we have toys at home. yes, she enjoys playing with the home toys. but for some reason she is desperate to steal the daycare toys.

it started a couple of weeks ago when luciana tried to hand me some little people to slip in the daycare bag when we left. she seemed so disappointed when I wouldn't pocket them, so I just sort of dropped them to the side when I lifted her over the green baby gate.

after a couple of days of this, she figured out that the toys weren't coming home with us. then, she started to push or drop toys to the other side of the gate to recover on her way out. mean mom mom that I am, I would push the toys back or discreetly hand them to the kids who gather to say goodbye when we leave.

now she decided that subtle isn't the way to go. if she is going to succeed at stealing toys, she might as well go big. she has been trying to steal the farmhouse and the schoolhouse sets. no luck.

the latest? the classroom just acquired a small shopping cart. luciana is desperate to take it home. she tried just pushing it to the gate. I suppose in hopes that I would simply pick her and the cart up willingly? or that I wouldn't notice the big red and yellow shopping cart that was coming home with us?

when that didn't work, luciana decided that maybe she needed to lay claim to the cart. she has started putting her blankie and her sippy cup in the cart and then pushing it to gate. maybe I'll just accept it as a package deal?

today, I finally got her out of the room only to discover that one of the classrooms had watched a little tv this afternoon. there was a tv cart in the hallway with a copy of a thomas the tank engine video sitting on the shelf. luciana saw this and made a beeline for the thomas tape. she held it up to me making her chugga chugga chugga choo choo noise and looking around as if to say "come on, mom mom, no one is around. they'll never know!"

we are watching thomas now while I write this. we are streaming it over netflix, but I kind of hope that luciana believes that I am the cool mom who took the tape from daycare for her.

sick baby.

I don't know what is wrong with luciana, but she hasn't been feeling well. she woke up with a rash on saturday morning and a low grade fever. she has basically just been taking it easy for the last few days. she has been taking it easy, the rest of us have been working like crazy. I had a busy weekend (proctoring the SATs and doing a crop walk with key club, how do I get dragged into these things?) and so my parents were on baby duty for a couple of days.

luciana hasn't gone to daycare yet this week, they have a no rash or fever over 100 policy. and I haven't wanted to send her. she starts out strong in the morning, crashes for an early nap and then seems ready to go to sleep about an hour or so earlier than usual. she is getting a bit better and daycare makes her happy, so I think she'll go tomorrow. I just wish that there was an easier solution--I don't like sending her to school unless she is her normal cheerful, silly, precocious little self (or her normal, cheerful, silly, precocious giant self).

just to make you feel sorry for us, here is a picture of luciana sick when she was little. she looks a lot like that still, just with more hair.