Alphabets & Songs & Colours & Pottying

You can tell I’m back home now from the dearth of blog posts. This is because I am too busy reading blogs or chasing down my busy tot. What is going to happen with two? Or more? I need to live closer to my mother so I can blog more often.

Every time we take a bath, for the last few months, we play with the foam alphabet and numbers, saying all the names and sounds, wetting them in the water, and sticking them on the bathroom wall. She loves it and tries to repeat everything. Her favourite letters are A, E, I and X. She really likes X. LOL.

A couple days ago, Rinah started singing the ABC song, except she says, “Ah, beh, sah, deh” instead of “A, B, C, D.” My heart stops overcome by sheer cuteness. She loves playing with the LeapFrog Fridge Phonics® Magnetic Set I picked up at Walmart a couple months ago.

There is a red button that sings the alphabet song and when you push a magnetic letter into the thing, it sings a little song about the sounds it makes … “B says buh, B says buh, every letter makes a sound, B says buh.” For letters with more than one sound it goes, “C says kh, and C says sssss, every letter makes a sound, C says kh, and sssss.” When she plays with it too long and it gets obnoxiously repetitive, then I turn the sound down. There are two levels, loud and soft. She’s also learning about shapes because the letters only fit right side up. It’s one of the best toys I’ve bought her so far, twenty bucks well spent.

While we were in Tokyo, I started showing her one of the Japanese alphabets (called hiragana) and got some flash cards, board books and posters for her. My mother and I were amazed that she seems to recognize the difference between English and Japanese writing. She says “A, B, C, D” when she sees a book in English and “A, I, U, E, O” when she sees something in Japanese.

She also started playing with some baby crayons I found while I was in Tokyo and really loves them. She sits and stacks them in various colour configurations, takes them apart, and starts all over again. I’ve showed her how to write with them, but she hasn’t caught on yet and that’s fine. She looks at me like I’m weird and then reaches for a pen or a pencil. I have no idea what the product name is in English, but I see Sarah has her kids playing with them, too.

These crayons are designed to be easy for chubby hands to hold, fun to play with as blocks, withstand lots of abuse without breaking, safe to suck on, and washable if they get on clothing. All in all, an amazing baby product.

AAAAAAAAAAARGH. I just stepped on the dark green one with my shoes on and it crumbled. Rinah has thrown them, dropped them, chewed on them, and they were fine but of course nothing can hold up my freakanormous weight. I’m so sad. *sob sob sob* I know if Ben stepped on it and broke it I would have been so mad.

I remember when I was little and I broke a dish or a cup, my mother would get back angry. Then one week, I remember I couldn’t understand why she didn’t get angry when she broke cups a couple days in a row. She was very quiet and just cleaned up. What am I supposed to do? I finished the cleaning up the pieces quietly part. I think I’m going to go beat myself up. *whack thwack, more sobs*

And now I really need to know where Sarah got hers. Her set has more colours than mine does. Yippee! She just let me know I can get the same thing at Amazon.

Except for crabbiness and crying when she’s sleepy or teething and pooping massive amounts daily, half in diaper, half in potty, Rinah is a sweet little girl and living up to her name: Joy and Song of the Covenant. She likes to walk around singing, talking, and coming up to me to give me a smile and a hug … sometimes, even a kiss or two or twenty.

She also pats herself on a job well-done after peeing in the potty and walks around nodding to herself, “Good girl, good girl.” This also happened once after peeing in her panties onto the floor. ROTFLOL.