This girl! This past fall, Sylvie's language skills exploded and she was suddenly speaking in complete sentences, giving us a wonderful glimpse into all that was going on in her head. She's had so many things to say to us that it seemed like a good time to record her most quotable expressions of late! We've loved watching her go from her earliest words and phrases to the sweet halting sentences with pauses as she figured out what she was trying to say to the talkative almost-three-year-old she is today.
She spent last summer and the fall referred to a pool as a "cool." And when one day she wriggled herself out of her puddle-jumper poolside at our neighbor's, and walked right back into the pool and promptly submerged herself... she spoke of it with wide eyes for a long time after, saying "Shylfee fall in the cool!" (It was utterly terrifying to see her underwater even though it only took me a few seconds to get to her... that mental image of my submerged child will stay with me as a reminder to constant water-side vigilance, oof.)
A typical two-year-old, she quickly learned and frequently utilized the phrase "Self do it!"
A lullaby was a "yubabye," and a little bit was "a yibabit." "I'm guck!" means "I'm stuck!"
Her earliest approximation of "thank you" was "gee-oo," and this one has stuck with her. She's very polite and utilizes it frequently!
She's in that fun stage where her tenses are a bit mixed up, and she says "Mama, I was findin' you!" when she means, "I found you," and "I was going..." when she means "I went..." We rather love this stage and I notice that Nathan employs her two-year-old "tense sense" on the regular lately.
I asked her one day, "Sylvie, do you want to go play in a park?" And she responded, "Yeah, play! Play in parking lot!" Well... not quite, kiddo.
Upon biting her finger while eating: "Oh no, Mama! Sylvie eat my own finger off!"
Early in her speech development, she seemed to think that all words should have two syllables, perhaps like words like Mama and Daddy do. So Nell was "Nell-Nell," Marie was "Ree-Ree," Molly was "Mo-Mo," and even words like "my" became "my-my," and "your," "your-your." So her sweet compliments would run like this: "Aw! Nell! Yove your-your earrings!" "Mama! Yove your-your dress!"
One day I asked her, "Hey Sylvie, who's the sweetest two-year-old?" and she tapped herself on the chest with a finger and replied modestly, "Right here." Subsequently we all enjoyed asking her "Who's the smartest? Who's the most fun?" etc., and she would repeat the trick with aplomb.
She shares her opinions on music freely, including whether something is "bad scary music" or "good nice music." (And the word "music" was previously "hanguck," an approximation none of us quite understood but all of us found amusing.) Examples of bad scary music include Mahler 1, the last movement specifically, and examples of good nice music include Haydn's Surprise Symphony, among many others.
One evening some of the girls' bedtime music was not to Sylvie's liking, and she expressed from her toddler bed in the room she shares with Nell that this was "bad scary music." Nell responded, "It's ok Sylvie, it's not bad, it's just in a minor key!" Sylvie replied matter-of-factly, "Don't want it minor key!" Subsequently she decided any and all music that she didn't care for must be in a minor key. When our church choir did the Rutter Requiem in November, she came and whispered in my ear during some of the movements, "Don't want it minor key!" And when listening to O Come, O Come Emmanuel during Advent she declared, "Don't want it Emmanuel! Don't want it minor key!"
She called to me frantically from the stairs one day: "Oh no! Daddy feet! Daddy feet!" I ran in to see what the problem was and discovered a Daddy Long-Legs spider in the corner of a step was the cause of the commotion. Well, she had conveyed a solid part of the idea!
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Chatting with Nell one evening just after bedtime, she declared her food-loving intentions for the coming day: “Nell? Cracker. With cheese on it. And ‘yami (salami). Shylfee eat it tomorrow!"
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And speaking of food, she goes to bed thinking about food and wakes up thinking about food. "What's for dinner?" she'll ask me first thing in the morning. "It's not dinner time, Sylvie. Do you want some breakfast?" Throughout the day she asks for meals irrespective of time of day. Right after breakfast, "What's for dinner?" Upon being reminded again that it's not dinner time, she'll try any other word for a meal to see if she can eke some more food out of us. "What's for lunch? What's for snack? Breakfast? ... Dessert?" A few favorites at the moment include oatmeal or polenta for breakfast, smoothies any time of day, homemade bread all the time, a variety of soups, clementines, peppers, and pears.
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Her demands after Mexican food one night for dinner: "I need forty chips! I need forty-five or forty-six chips! Why go bed now? If Sylvie go bed I can’t have forty chips!"
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One morning I was making waffles when Sylvie asked what was for breakfast.
Mama: "Are you ready for a waffle?"
Sylvie: "Um, no, I don't like awful."
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One evening at dinner I asked her, "Sylvie, do you want some more mac and cheese?" She responded matter-of-factly, "No gee-oo. I want a glass of wine."
When Sylvie was snuggled up in bed with me early in the morning as Nathan left for work, she sat bolt upright in horror when she heard the front door close behind him and said: "Uh-oh mama! Daddy didn’t kiss you!"
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And while she's fully potty-trained now, much to my joy, there was a time last fall when I was failing to commit to the process but also growing weary of diapers. Each day, I'd ask her, "Sylvie, when do you think you'll be potty trained?" And she'd respond either, "Um, last night," or "Um, last year," or "Um, tomorrow."
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When she was wearing fairy wings for Halloween, I asked her, "Sylvie, can you fly?" She responded matter-of-factly, "No I can't fly. Because it's too cold to fly."
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With similar logic, another day she informed me, "I can't dance, Mama. I'm too tall to dance."
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Pointing to the drain in the bathtub she informed me with a clear sense of trepidation, "I am not gonna fall in the... in the... in the that thing."
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Apparently perturbed after watching me get my blood drawn at an appointment with my midwife, Sylvie asked me several days later, "Mama, why that lady take out your blood? Why? Why Mama?"
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| "I'm hiding'!" |
Lest you think that being a mother of all girls saves me from gross jokes and humor (oh, you would be wrong!) -- Upon passing gas and coughing at the same time: "Haha, I just toot on my cough!"
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The whole family went to work with Nathan for a day, helping him with a variety of tasks. Sylvie carried around her pocket-sized little dolly all day. I suppose it was understandable, then, that she became quite distressed when she heard Nathan talk about putting away a "dolly" (hand cart) in a closet within the facilities. Sylvie immediately began to wail: "No Daddy, don't put my dolly in the closet!"
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In December, when Nell and Marie were in a production of the Nutcracker, Nell hopped in the car after a dress rehearsal, with her adorable lamb face paint still on her face. Sylvie was perplexed by the look, to say the least.
Sylvie: "Nell, why your face looks... bad? Why, Nell?"
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At bedtime: "No I don’t want to go to bed today. And I said that before."
Oh! Well, in that case.
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Out of the blue: "Mama is nice. Daddy is weird."
Among my favorites because it's oh-so-sweet -- Snuggling up with me in the rocking chair at bedtime one evening she whispered, "I am so safe. I am so so safe."
And the ultimate toddler burn, so good it stopped me in my tracks:
Sylvie: "I don’t like Daddy."
Mama: "Hey, it makes Daddy and me both sad when you say that. It’s not nice. We love Daddy!"
Sylvie: "Ok. I like Daddy." (Long pause) "I said I like Daddy, but I don’t like Daddy."
Girl, you are a handful and you have so many opinions and thoughts. We love you, Sylvie!
