Today at the grocery store Shoshanna proved that she can already frighten older boys… we were in the bathroom before I dropped her off at the play place and she came striding out of the stall heading for the sinks.  This poor boy, probably about 5 years old, took one look at her and demanded that his mom pick him up.

In other news, possibly related to the fun reflux, we bought her new “party shoes” today.  Yes, again.  The ballet slippers lasted exactly 2 months before she wore them out and outgrew them.  Despite what Payless says about these shoes (”extra wiggle room in the toes” and “rigorous wear testing to make sure they stand up to your child’s every adventure”), her feet got too wide for the toe box and she blew through the soles, especially on the toes, really quickly.  Luckily for us, Target had a bunch of shoes on clearance, so we were able to get her some new ones that have much more substantial soles.  And we got them in a NINE (the ballet ones were a 7 1/2); she’s got plenty of growing room, admittedly, but we went up A SIZE AND A HALF between pairs of shoes!  Oy.

Or not really.  For whatever reason, Shoshanna’s reflux has flared up again with a vengeance, nearly three years after she stopped taking Prilosec.  The past two nights I’ve heard her refluxing as we lay in her bed reading stories at bedtime; yesterday evening she told us that lying on the carpet made her throat hurt and this morning she said something to the effect of “I gag and my tummy hurts.”  Can’t really argue with that being a description of acid reflux!  So we headed to the drugstore and picked up some Children’s Tums to tide us over until we can get to the doctor and see what they say.

Just back from a week in DC… I’ll post details and pics later, but there are three things that I wanted to put up for the amusement of the general public.

Thing one: “Swallaby Swoop was a BAD badger!”
Shoshanna came to me and told me this with exactly that much context one morning. She’s been pretending a lot about a group of badgers, I have no idea why.

Thing two: Saturday morning, Shoshanna decided she wanted different cereal than the one that was in her bowl. I told her that she had to finish what she had (all of three bites) before she got a different kind. The conversation went like this:

At which point all the adults present (M, me, and Grandma) completely lost it. Because she was REQUESTING things mid-tantrum. (She did finish the cereal and get the frosted mini-wheats that she wanted so badly.)

Thing three: Yesterday as we were driving home, Shoshanna was pretending to write e-mails to her pretend friend Shoshanna (who was new for this game… lately her invisible friends are nearly always Dora and Boots). She “sent” one and then said sadly, “But she’s not there so I can’t talk to her right now.” We explained that the nice thing about e-mail is that her friend can read it when she gets home - it will be there waiting for her. Two seconds later, “She wrote me back!” Us: “What did she say?” “Hi Shoshanna. Do you want to come play at my house? Ok! We will have fun! But I can’t come play right now because I’m not there. OK, you will come later. Bye.”

Shoshanna is big enough now that we can shop for her in either the toddler section OR the regular kid’s section.* When we were out at Target earlier this week, we took a spin through the clearance racks in the girls’ section, and I was convinced that I’m going to keep buying her clothes in the toddler section for as long as humanly possible. Why?

Because my three-year-old does NOT need to be wearing shirts emblazoned with Hannah Montana or High School Musical.

Yeah, there are character-emblazoned clothes in the toddler section, too - primarily Dora and Disney princesses. I try to avoid these (though I admit to having caved and bought her Little Einsteins overalls last summer, and her underwear mostly have Dora and Elmo on them) but at least if she IS wearing them, she’s shilling for media that are actually age-appropriate. She wouldn’t know WHAT to make of Hannah Montana or HSM. She was terrified of Jackie Chan Adventures when E was watching it over spring break.

*It should be noted that Shoshanna is EXTREMELY excited that she can shop in the “big girl section” at Target, and pretty much has to at Children’s Place (they make a 4T but they’re rarely in stock at the outlet). A couple of weeks ago we bought her socks in the big girl section and she loooooves them pretty much BECAUSE they came from there.

After the “hourly garage” incident, which was followed a couple of weeks later by a “head start” incident, we have been paying more attention to what Shoshanna can and can’t read.

The short answer is she CAN read some words, either by sight or by sounding them out.  She knows by sight the names of all of the kids in her class, even out of context.  For example, months ago, I had a Ben Folds Five t-shirt on and she asked my why Ben’s name was on my shirt; right now we have Olivia out of the library and she knew right away upon seeing it what the title was. And guess what, there’s a Ben and an Olivia in her class.

But those aren’t the only things she can read.  We also have Big Dog… Little Dog out of the library right now and the first time through she figured out Fred and Ted pretty quickly, as well as the title and the first two of the signs when Fred and Ted have to decide where to drive (”the mall” and “the zoo”).  Of course, now she has the whole thing memorized.

While we’re on the subject of books, I have a recommendation.  We got David Wiesner’s Flotsam as a gift several months ago and we love it.  It is quite literally a picture book - no text to read.  Shoshanna loves to “read” it to us.  It’s the story of a boy who finds an underwater camera that washes up on shore… the illustrations are breathtaking and the story is very sweet.

Tags: trex, little kid, reading

Hrm, embeds aren’t working for some reason. OK, video of Shoshanna dancing is here.

We went to an SCA demo at the Herschell Carousel Factory Museum yesterday.  It’s always fun because they put on a family-friendly medieval fair as a fundraiser and we’re there to be ambiance.  As an added bonus, anybody who’s in medieval clothing gets free rides on the carousel, which of course Shoshanna loves.

I seriously have never seen my child work her cute as much as she did yesterday.  Of course she got the prizes from all the little games they had - little plastic gee-gaws that I’m going to pitch as soon as I get a chance.  But she also batted her eyelashes at everyone who passed by and got her picture taken a million times (I’m not kidding - there were a couple of people who were almost starting to freak me out, they were taking so many pictures of her).  She also worked the cute and got given a pretty stone from a stone/geode vendor and a flower magnet from a ceramicist.

In case you want to see JUST how cute she was yesterday, there are pictures here (having the whack-a-rat game explained to her), here (us playing the whack-a-rat game), and here (watching Edith weaving).

An acquaintance also gave me a handful of pictures that she took of us at an event in April - I didn’t find out if she has them posted anywhere online, but I will try to so I can post a link.

Tags: trex, little kid, SCA, carrousel museum

A friend of mine, an OT in Central/Eastern Mass, is in training to administer the SIPT and is looking for a kid to run the test on before her next training session (before 7/19).  As she puts it, “This is a win - win situation. It gives me the opportunity to work with a child with this tool who has these issues and it is the opportunity for a family to receive the information from a $1800 test free of charge by an experienced clinician.”

Here’s the parameters for the kid to be tested:

1. An a-typical child between 5-8.11, without a neurological diagnosis, who has average to above average intelligence.
2. This child can either be know to have sensory processing issues *or* can be suspected to have sensory processing issues (motor planning, visual concerns, body awareness, poor school performance, etc..)
3. Said child *must* be able to be tested for a minimum of one hour and then another hour the following week or one hour - break - another hour the same day.
4. Said child will most likely be taped either in a center *or* at a local playground for possible use in a classroom setting.

If you are interested or know of someone who might be, drop me a line or a comment and I will put you in touch with Lisa.

I got asked several times this morning, “Why Daddy is going to pick me up at school?   Daddy picks me up at school on MONDAY!”  I tried to explain to Shoshanna that we are trying to use the car less because it’s better for the environment (never mind gas that’s well over $4/gallon here…) and so we don’t want to take the car on two trips downtown every day.

Last night on our walk, Shoshanna was picking flowers as usual.  She also picked up a couple of tiny pinecones and wanted to put them in water with the flowers but we said that you don’t usually do that with pinecones.  We decided to do an experiment to see what happens to pinecones when you put them in water, though.  We had 3; we put 2 in the water and kept one out (you have to have a control group!).  On initial observation, the pine cones floated.  Twelve hours later, the were still floating but had closed up and were floating just BELOW the surface of the water instead of on top.  Further comparisons between the experimental group and the control group will be impossible, since this morning Shoshanna decided to put the control group in the water, too.

Plans have been finalized and plane tickets acquired for Shoshanna to go to Grammy and Grampa’s while we parents go on vacation in August.  Last year she did pretty well at Grandma & Opa’s house, but the next time we went to DC she informed me very insistently “and you NOT go on da-cation”.  The first time we talked about her going to my folks’ house she asked me whether we were going to go on vacation and I said yes and she was upset for a couple of minutes, but these days she just seems excited about it.  We’ll see how she does once the reality of me leaving sets in.

Today at lunch Shoshanna insisted that she wanted some plain yogurt with her lunch.  i asked her if she was sure and she said yes.  So I dished up a small amount for her.  She took a small bite… and spat it out with a resounding “pleh!”  (”Pleh” is her word for anything that she doesn’t like…)  Then she looked at me and said, “Is it SUPPOSED to taste like that?  Did it go BAD?”