October 19, 2011

  • Today we were buying stuff at Wal-Mart, and we checked out in the garden center where you don't have to wait (usually).  We have talked to the cashier there a lot over the years, so Madeleine is used to telling her stories.  Today she was telling a very out-of-context story about Karen's wedding and dancing with a boy there (I say out-of-context because she'll start saying things that don't make sense to someone who wasn't there and doesn't know the general idea of what she's talking about).  Madeleine said several comments about it, but then the cashier had to talk to the other cashier about something.  Madeleine said another sentence or so about the wedding and then went on, as if she were still telling her story, but said, "and I'm just talking to myself."  It cracked me up, that she realized that the cashier wasn't listening to her and that she was essentially talking to herself. 

    I've been reading a lot of longer books to Madeleine recently, because her attention span and comprehension is getting better.  We send Grant to play math games on Starfall on the computer (he recently learned how to use the mouse, and he loves to "pop bubbles", which counts backwards from 100, and he can click on a hundred bubbles quite quickly.  He loves all the counting and adding games, too).  I've noticed Madeleine using some "book language" when she talks, now, such as coming out of the house and looking at the night sky and saying it is "velvety black".  And then today we saw strange farm machines in a field with what looked like rolls of long cable or hoses, and Madeleine told me they were "spools".  I asked her how she knew that, and she told me some book or other... Clifford's Kitten, maybe?... that had that word in it.  ("Velvety black" is from the Little Ballerina, she informed me.) 

    She's doing a little bit better at reading books, too.  She'll still miss easy words at times, but then she'll surprise me and know a word like "recital" and "slippers" (although I'm sure context clues are helping). 

    Madeleine has been loving to paint and to stamp with rubber/foam stamps, to put stickers on things and decorate things... she keeps asking to do art projects and pretty much makes them up on her own.  She'll get out art supplies and say she wants to do something with them and then do it.  It's kind of nice for me, to know she can get stuff and do it on her own.

    Anyway, I should go....  toodles!