Ada et al
adventures of the notorious Yoohoo

Okay, the truth is I had no idea who Susan Boyle was. But, when Laura showed me the youtube video that well over one hundred million others have already seen, I instantly understood the comparison of Ada with the singing sensation of 2009.

Might Ada be next? Watch, listen, and tell us which singer she reminds you of most. Janis Joplin? Mick Jagger? a cat? Stevie Wonder? Someone else?

“Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”

“Row Row Row Your Boat”

“Row Row Row Your Mamala”

Ada’s obsession with The Cat in the Hat began when she was about 20 months old. It was fun at first but grew tiresome after week after week after week of reading nothing but the Cat in the Hat at bedtime.

Luckily, over the last couple of months we’ve been able to distract Ada with other stories and poems, like The Owl and the Pussycat and the Story of the Little Girl Who Went to the Zoo. But I’m afraid the Cat is going to make a comeback with one of the gifts Ada’s Meme and Opa are planning for her second birthday. Luckily, Ada can’t read this birthday spoiler, though you wouldn’t necessarily guess it after seeing her rendition of the Cat in the Hat. These videos were taken in March, when Ada’s hair was slightly shorter.

Ada had a playdate with Jaiden today. His mother had the brilliant idea for the kids to play with GOOP, a recipe from First Art that involves mixing corn starch with water (2:1 ratio) & some food coloring.

What I learned:

1. If you want uniform color, add the food coloring to the water first, because once you have mixed the water and corn starch, it’s a lot harder to get the food coloring to blend. On the other hand if you want trippy swirls and children dyed with pure food coloring, hey, make the goop first and THEN add the food coloring.
2. GOOP is my kryptonite, as Cyn puts it. This stuff is creepy. It is dry and yet wet at the same time. Solid and yet it oozes. It’s a powder and yet if you massage it it becomes a gelatinous mess again. Yaay? I vacuumed it up in a hurry and when I think of it now I get a little shuddery.
3. I did not know what corn starch is. It turns out that it is the starch of corn. (See Wikipedia.) I will never eat corn again without thinking about my experience with goop, and I am now going to be very suspicious of gravies and frostings (heretofore, my primary experience of corn starch). Like, is it becoming goop in my stomach?

Anyway, the kids enjoyed it. Ada would I think be happy to bathe in it. Jaiden I think shared a bit more of my dubiousness.

There are three videos below, included in the photos. You will have to click on the TEXT in the descriptions to play the videos.

Two weeks ago she kept asking people if they wanted to do X, with ME?? which was hilarious.

She approached a little boy at a playground. “Would you like to go to JP Licks for ice cream, with ME?” Let’s count this as the first time she asked someone out for a date. Since I wasn’t actually planning on going to JP Licks, much less having ice cream there, and I’m pretty sure the other little kid’s mama wasn’t going anywhere, needless to say her offer — however appealing — wasn’t accepted.

But she did this with everything.

“Do you want to have tea, with ME?”

“Do you want to read a book, with ME?”

So cute.

Lately she’s been asserting, “This is my privacy,” and telling us to leave the room. Not just for what we might expect would be private moments, like going to the potty, but plainly when she’s irritated by us and just wants us to leave.

She can also be pretty bossy.

“Mama, move! MOVE!!.”

“Sepia, get out!”

“Stop fighting, cats!”

“Get that for me, Mama.”

I should add that even though she can be very bossy, she can also be very very very polite.

“Would you like some, Mama?” offers a bite of pretend or real food. “Would you like some, Mama?” offers another bite of pretend or real food. Repeat, ad infinitum.

“Thank you, Mama.” after being given a bite of food. Repeat, many many times despite explanations of why it is not necessary ….

Mama: “Would you like some of this, Ada?” Ada: “No, please.”

Regardless, it’s absolutely charming to give her a toy or food or something she has asked for, and have her say in her piping clear voice, “Thank you, Mama!”

The other day she was shoving a little wrapper down her pants. “We need to get this kid some pockets,” we said.

“This is my period,” she told us.

Sunday night (5/30) she approached me with a small wooden toy and began rubbing it against my foot. “I’m giving you a massage,” she told me. “On your toes. And your feet.”

“Oh, that’s very nice, Ada — I love it.”

Then she brandished a toy screwdriver at me. “Would you like a haircut?”

“Sure,” I said warily, since she was now pushing the screwdriver against my chest. “But on my hair — not my chest.”

“Not your skin,” she agreed. “Your nose?”

Over the last week we both noticed that suddenly she’s asking us a lot more questions and a different type.

“Where are we?” (parked in an unfamiliar location)

“Where are we going?” (getting into the stroller)

“What is in my mouth?” (a bite of mixed food items, I think cauliflower and macaroni)

“What are you doing?”

“Where are you going?”

“What you gettin’ for me, Mama? What you makin’ for me?”

I think it’s the beginning of a new era.

Her final words to me this afternoon, before dropping off to sleep in her carseat:

“I want sushi, Mama.”

Many of you send comments to us by email. This is lovely and we appreciate it. But we want Ada to be able to appreciate it, too, in the far future.

So henceforth you will be REQUIRED to post your comments here on the blog. (Unless it’s truly the kind of comment that ought to be private.) If you send them to us by email we’ll post them on the blog for you. If you want to post your comments on the blog but have trouble doing it, we can help you get set up, and/or post your comments for you.

We thank you, and Ada thanks you.

“You know those beeping sounds, mama?”

“Yeah,” I said warily. “What beeping sounds?” I note that she is holding the remote control for the stereo.

“Those beeping sounds.”

“Why is it beeping?” I ask. I don’t really hear any beeping, by the way.

“Because, it is really really good. It is good for Brown Bear, and for Mamala, and for [mumble, mumble], for the beeping sounds. I going to turn ON the remote.”

She grabs some empty CD cases. “Wow! This is good. This is NOT the CD.” She puts it in a different stack. “This is not good.” She takes another one. “This is good.” She puts it on the other stack. “This is not good.” Repeats for five CD cases. “Be careful!” she warns herself. (The stack is a bit topply.) “These are dirty. These are NOT good.” She opens one up. “That’s good. Oh, that’s good.”

“I’m goin’ to knock them over.” She does. “I’m going to get some more CDs. This is not good to turn on. I’m going to get some more to turn on. Oh this is not good to turn on.” (All these CD cases are empty.) “This doesn’t matter any more.” She has made a new stack.

Back to the remote control. “The music, to turn them on.” press, press, press. “I turned it on, and it will make some music, and go ‘beep, beep beep beep.’” Mutter mutter mutter.

“Hey!” Now the remote is held up to her ear and she is talking to it like a cell phone. “Yeah, Mamiche is going to do science. Hey, Mamiche!”

Picking up an empty CD case from the floor. “Oh, this is good.” She brings it to me and tells me, “This is good. This is good to turn on.”

“I’m gonna get Brown Bear in seconds.” (I don’t know what this means, or if I misheard her.)

She is now making a little arrangement of the CD cases and the remote. “This is place place. And that’s another place place.” What? Again, am I mishearing her? Or just not getting it?

Virginia Woolf has entered the picture. “She has a neck-a-lace. Waaah, Gina Woolf.”

“This is music,” (pointing to the remote). “Oh-kay, mama.” She picks up the remote and the Virginia Woolf doll and takes them to the couch. She’s on the “cell phone” again.

“Hi! Umm, no, I’m at Mama’s house.” Then she tells me, “I left it at Cousin Meme’s house. I’ll have to get it later.” Then she walks to the door. “I’ll get it right now.” She grabs her butt. “This is some money. This is some cats. The reason is to turn some music on for my cats.”

I belatedly am realizing that grabbing her butt is a sign that I should take her to the potty. Signing out from Ada-Land.

I had originally been a bit more ambitious, and imagined I would write out some hilariously bohemian anecdotes and discussions of her artistic methods, but it’s too late at night and Vasari was too long ago (20 years, ugh) for me to pull it together. So instead use your imagination or just watch the videos.

One video and three photos from recent outings. I’m back-dating this to the date of the most recent event here (5/7), btw, so don’t get confused about the time.

CLICK FOR VIDEO

The video is from outside the Children’s Museum last week, 5/7. Ada and I were leaving and a group of kids, maybe 8 years old? were running around playing tag. Ada totally inserted herself into the group. At first they were a little bemused and wary: Is this little kid going to get in our way? But then they started to get used to her and even adopted her as a sort of mascot. In this video, she does a high-five with one kid, and then says “high five!” to some other kids. She does this kind of “hi i’m going to play with you” thing a lot with older kids, I’ve noticed, and it’s always hilarious to see them be a little startled at this not-yet-2yo talking to them in complete sentences, expressing her opinions rather forcibly, and wanting to play with them.

Ada has discovered the power of repeating for emphasis. So for instance she will tell me, when eating soup, “This is a very very special soup.” The “soup” is usually a colored wooden block. She’s big with the pretend these days. To be honest it’s more Elmer Fudd-like: “This is a vewy vewy special soup.”

This morning while eating actual, real oatmeal with bananas and yogurt, she was dictating bite-size. “I want a BIG bite.”

I offer her a single rolled oat. “Is this a big bite?” I ask.

“No! A BIG BIG bite!”

I pull out a tiny bite. “This is BIG,” I tell her.

She laughs. “Noooo.”

“It’s sooo big. It won’t even fit in your mouth!” I inch it forward and yank it back. She laughs. “Do you really want it?”

“Yes!”

“It’s an enormous, huge bite!” I warn her before finally giving it to her.

“I want a huge huge bite!” she tells me.

Addendum: This evening, after I put on her new summer sandals (she didn’t fit into the ones we’d bought for her earlier, which is a lesson to us not to buy so far in advance), she said, “These are really really nice.”

Lately she’s been giving us “big, big, hug!” She runs to us and holds us really really tight. Which is awesome, and a nice change from, “No kisses!” and “No hugs!” which we get a lot of the time.

Notwithstanding her orders to us (I think she just likes telling us what to do & exercising control over our interactions with her), she’s increasingly physical and touchy. She’ll come over to us and say, “Touch Mamiche’s neck,” and then just rest her hand on her neck for a few minutes. She often rubs her hand along my arm. And she’s not shy about commenting on freckles, birthmarks, etc.

She particularly likes to touch ears. Since she was a little little baby she would touch her own ear; over the past year she sucks one thumb and touches her ear with the other hand, routinely when concentrating or tired. But now she’s expanded. “I want to touch your ear!” and then you feel her little hand gently grasping your ear. She doesn’t poke, she just holds it. She likes the cats’ ears too. If she’s having a little temper tantrum you can sometimes distract her by saying, “Would you like to touch Pippin’s ear?” and she will stop howling for a minute to say, “Yes,” and then, gently reaching out to touch the ear, a beautiful smile will cross her lips.

When playing ball in the hallway with Mamiche, she devised a new game: “I gonna do dabbo.” It means, “I’m going to run around behind Mamiche, lift up her shirt, press up close, step into her pants, and giggle like a maniac.”