Memorize, No Crying, Puddles

Sofi has memorized the words to "Run, Mouse Run" by Petr Horacek. It's pretty crazy - when she turns the pages and says the words it creates the illusion that she can read.

She no longer has a giant entourage of stuffed animals - she's settled on two favorites: "Mama Cat" and "Mouseykins" - both puppets.

Lately she's started doing something strange: when she gets upset, instead of crying, she starts saying "No crying, no crying" over and over again. If she gets more upset she actually will start crying, and then she'll start to scream "No crying! No crying!"

I don't think *we've* ever told her "no crying" - so where'd she pick it up from? Maybe she just doesn't like to cry? Sometimes when she starts saying "No crying" I'll say "It's ok to cry" and then she'll just say, louder, "No crying!" Or maybe she doesn't mean "Don't cry" - maybe she means, "No! If this condition persists, I'm going to start crying!"

One of her favorite things to do is splash in puddles. If she discovers a puddle she'll run and jump in it and she'll get upset if we try to take her out before she's done. Good thing we moved to Seattle.

And yesterday she learned how to use the Wii remote: they have a little drawing program built in the dashboard in the photo channel. I just handed her the remote and left the room - later, when I came back, I discovered she'd painted a lot of scribbles and heart stamps. Something that took me forever to figure out about the program - moving the remote closer to the screen makes the pen / shape bigger and vice-versa. I was spending many minutes mashing buttons trying to figure out how to change the pen-size while Sofi was yelling, "Too big! Too big!"

Lately naps have been challenging. She doesn't get tired until around 3 or 4 PM - if we let her nap then, she'll nap for an hour or two, and then we won't be able to get her to bed at night until 10 PM! On the other hand, if we skip her nap, she'll get tired twelve hours after she woke up in the morning. She'll then sleep eleven hours. So each day she goes to sleep and wakes up one hour earlier. So we've been giving her a nap every three or four days. I think the books say we're not supposed to do this, because kids like structure...and she's supposed to be getting more than eleven hours of sleep a night anyway...but when I was a kid my parents stopped giving me naps at an early age and I turned out ok. I think.