…and for any catalog modeling scouts that may stop by.

Hands up! This is a robbery!

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She talks about taking her computer (she mispronounces ordenador as denador) to work, and also staying home to work like I do. She also mentions the “Mommy took a big bag of money from work!” allegation that I mentioned earlier, adding the spurious claim that her mother “hides her money on the floor under her computer”. I did search for said treasure, but in the end, I had to conclude: Myth BUSTED. Her abuela playfully tries to get her to give up some of the riches, but Nora counters with evidence that her abuela already has money in her wallet.

Let me provide some context for the second video. Nora’s abuela is currently out of work on medical leave because she has a problem with her knee, and she has to go to physical rehabilitation a couple times a week. Also, Nora went to the doctor yesterday with her mother because her mother’s got an ear ache, so a lot of their conversation is about doctors and medicine.

They discuss las barracas, general term for carnival rides or booths that trucked into small towns in Spain during that town’s holiday week. Nora remembers them well from the time she spent with her Spanish grandparents over the winter solstice holidays. Sometimes she likes to ride them, but she has a very low tolerance for noise and centripetal force.

At one point she switches gears to talk about Parchís, a Spanish board game that is a cousin of the game I know as Parcheesi™ (they share a common Indian ancestor), that Nora and her abuela like to play together.

Her gestures are so hilarious in this video. I’m sorry it’s so long, but the cuteness refused to wane enough for me to stop recording or make an editing cut.

What blows me away most about the current stage of my daughter’s mental development is just how observant she is at noticing causes and effects and intuiting the motivations behind the agents in her world. Of course she probably asked her mother “Why are we at a the doctor?” about seven hundred times when they were there, but she has understood the reasoning and generalized it to “when someone is sick or part of them hurts, they go to the doctor to get cured”. The daycare workers tell us that her verbal and reasoning skills are considerably more advanced than her peers. And yet, her ability to identify colors, numbers or letters are at about the level of a sleepy dachshund. No doubt those abilities will arrive soon, but it’s truly fascinating watching her develop. I’m enjoying every minute of it.

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Another time, I was downstairs working when I heard someone get up upstairs and go to the bathroom. Then I heard the person leave the bathroom and close a bedroom door. It had to be my wife. Two minutes later, the stairway light came on. I went to investigate and found Nora standing at the top of the stairs – blocked by the toddler gate, thankfully – peering down at me silently. I put her back to bed. Later the next morning, I mentioned to my wife that she’d woken up Nora the previous night, and she said she’d never gotten up. So perhaps Nora went to pee on her own? Who knows…

I have taken another step back from Nora’s regular bedtime routine, opting to sit on the floor out in the hall, rather than on the guest bed while Nora falls asleep. It’s a step in the right direction, and Nora seems to be taking to it well, although sometimes she will get up and come check on me and be ordered back to bed.

Our bedtime routine has also taken a turn for the adorable. When I tuck her in and give her a hug, she usually says, whether I have or not, “Poppy! You haven’t shaved today! Tomorrow you can shave, okay?” Then she demands to kiss my nose, each eye, each ear, and hair. These moments are so precious to me.

The magi brought Nora a cash register, complete with toy foodstuffs and money. She absolutely loves playing with it, saying often, “What do you want to buy?” When her playmate chooses an item, she says, “I have to scan it!”, and she presses the button on the toy bar code scanner, causing a loud BEEP sound. Then she declares, “You have to pay!”, but is more than willing to open up the cash drawer to give her playmate some money to pay for the item. Her business model is slightly flawed, but then she’s not in it for the money. Occasionally, the bar code scanner gets magically transformed into a telephone and she holds it to her ear and talks to Rubén, who, despite actually existing, has taken on a primary role in her cast of imaginary friends that she talks to around the house.

This month we had to bid a fond farewell to Nora’s favorite daycare worker, Nela. Nora and Nela have always had a special relationship. For instance, Nela was the first person to be allowed to braid Nora’s hair. She had decided to leave daycare work, for which she’s certified, and start a children’s clothing store in town. We will still see her around, and Nora would be “graduating” out of daycare this September anyway, but it’s sad to see her go. I took this photo of the two of them on Nela’s last day.

Several times this month, upon seeing me open the cabinet where we store Nora’s medicine, she has said, “Poppy, what are we going to do? [cough! cough!]” I suppose that, after having to deal with a sick child that refused medicine to the point where she had to be held down with almost all my weight, I’ve got to be in favor of pharmaceutical companies erring on the side of “too appetizing” for medicine, and pretend hypochondria is just a consequence we’ve got to accept.

This month I learned that two-year-olds still fall for the “Please close the door…no, from the other side” trick. Sometimes when she’s in my office picking items off my desk, asking inquisitively, “What is this? To do?” I have to ask her to leave so I can continue working, and this trick is working wonders at the moment.

I recall learning this song before I knew what the heck a submarine was, and I’m pretty sure that Nora still doesn’t even know what “yellow” means. It holds a special place in my marriage because of a special night in a bar in the Scottish highlands when we had a particularly fun time singing it in a large crowd. The fact that we can learn songs without having any clue about their meaning still amazes me.

Nora is definitely to the age where one must be careful of everything said around her, because it will be repeated without filter to anyone she has even a little confidence in. Her mother brought home about fifty 1, 2 and 5 euro-cent coins, totaling maybe 2€, from a jar she’d been throwing loose change into at work. Next thing we know, Nora is saying, “Mommy took a lot of money from work and gave it all to me!” to everyone in the local supermarket. Of course they know that Marga’s not an embezzler (or do they!?), but every single one of them remarked about how Nora’s phrasing didn’t make it sound very good.

How much longer is this post? A little bit, but not too much.

I recently had to following conversation with Nora…

Erik: Ow! Don’t hit me with that toy.
Nora: Why?
Erik: Because it hurts, and I don’t like things that hurt, do you?
Nora: A little bit. Sometimes. But not too much.

She’s not really a moderate masochist; this is her canned diplomatic response to any question requiring a yes/no or quantitative answer. e.g. Do you want some juice? How much do you love Poppy? Are you a Democrat? You have to admit that it’s a clever, if utterly meaningless, response you’d expect out of the most agile politician. She’s not yet three; no need to commit to any positions yet.

The state of the offspring is strong!

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I asked my mother for fifty cents
To see the elephant jump the fence.
He jumped so high,
He reached the sky,
And didn’t come down ’til the fourth of July

Searching for the origins of this rhyme has been quite interesting. It seems to primarily be a playground rhyme sung whilst jumping rope. There are some indications that the origin is from the African American traditions in the southern United States. For instance, it is included on the 1956 album Music from the South, Vol 5.

It later appeared as a verse in Rufus Thomas’ 1965 classic, Walking the Dog, which was covered by Jackie Shane, The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Sonics, The Count Bishops, Stevie Ray Vaughan, The Grateful Dead and Aerosmith, among others. Quite a list, eh? Here’s the original version, which I think might be the best of them all:

I suspect the version my daughter learned from her grandmother is much closer to the original playground chant. Without further ado, I present I Asked My Mother For Fifty Cents:

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Here’s the original:

Here’s the remix by Yolanda Be Cool. The actual singing doesn’t start until the 30 second mark. Just try not to tap your foot, I dare you!!

When my parents were here, and Nora began talking about my ringtone as she does sometimes, my father realized that, using his iPhone, he could call my phone using FaceTime for free over my wifi network and make my phone ring. Absolute hilarity ensued. We did this about 75 times that night. No, really, that’s how many missed calls my phone had on it when I recovered it from Nora’s grasp.

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I have witnessed the festivities in Mondragón for several years. There is a parade through town with the jolly old Olentzero tossing hard candy into the crowd. The parade ends in the main town square, where children dance, songs are sung, and the Olentzero continues giving out candy to the crowds. Young people who have carried torches during the parade then light a big bonfire in the middle of the square. In some parts of the Basque Country, they actually burn an effigy of the Olentzero. From what I can tell, the bonfire is an old pagan solstice practice of rebirth.

A little complimentary plate of beans, with blood sausage, to go with my Rioja.

Nora and her Tía Marga serve a champagne sorbet that Tía Marga makes.

It looks like the party’s gotten out of hand, but really it was just me demonstrating the proper amount of brandy to put in a snifter. It should just reach the lip of the glass when it’s set on its side. Nora said, “Poppy’s wine fell over!”

Chocolates after dinner.

Nora was delighted to receive a toy ironing board and iron from the Olentzero for Christmas.

While I an generally against gender stereotyping and am 100% sure that there’s no way this would’ve been the present if she were a boy, I cannot deny that she really and truly loves her ironing board.

She kept asking people to give her some item of clothing that needed ironing.

She also got a sleeping bag and some mittens.

After going to bed at 2 AM on Christmas Eve and having an exciting Christmas morning of presents, Nora was exhausted.

Later we met up with the rest of the family for even more presents! Here she is opening a Hello Kitty dollhouse.

Playing with her Hello Kitty dollhouse.

Life is not peaceful for Hello Kitty in her house, as it is rocked by furniture-rearranging earthquakes every few minutes.

We had a great time eating, drinking and playing with our family in Mondragón.

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The immense irony of the situation being that they are dressed as shepherds and need shepherding themselves.

It took me a while to spot my daughter. She’s the one at the back with the grandma scarf on.

That one.

The “everyone hold onto a rope with loops tied in it” trick is what makes such an excursion remotely feasible.

My little old lady.

The Nativity Scene

I encourage you to check out the detail in the large version.

There was a “moon” in the sky. Also, sometimes there was lightning and thunder.

Many of the characters were animatronic, the fires were flickering, the water flowed, the windmill spun, and one house had smoke emanating from the chimney.

The star of the show.

The magi arrive from the east, one on camel, one on an elephant, and one on a horse.

The house with the smoke had lamps inside, a kitty on the deck, and a sow nursing piglets in the yard. You can see the blurred windmill in the background.

I struggle to imagine the number of hours of detailed work that went into this nativity scene. I was very impressed.

A group photo. Nora seemed content walking to the church with her friends, but as soon as she saw me, the balance of desires swung hard towards her needing to be with me holding my hand at all times. I was the only parent there, and she was the only child crying.

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Drinkin’ mah coffee.

It’s cute to watch her make bilingual mistakes. It’s rare that she attempts a direct translation from one language to another, but when it happens sometimes it can go wrong. I remember when I learned Spanish, I had great difficulty with the words “todavía” (still) and “ya” (already), particularly as they were combined with “no” to form phrases: ya no = not anymore; todavía no = not yet. I know I’m not the only one who gets confused by this, because Spaniards make the same mistakes going the other way. Anyway… That was a long preface to tell you that the other day Nora said “already no” when she meant to say “not anymore”, which I found cute.

One weekend this month the weather was really horrendous and we had no plans, so we spent most of Saturday and Sunday at home. At one point when we were bored and getting on each others’ nerves a little, my wife suggested we play with the Wii, which, like most gaming consoles, sits dormant after the initial novelty wore off. The only game we thought Nora might have any shot at playing was Wii Bowling. We set up a “three person with two remotes” game, with me and Nora going first and third with one remote, and with her mother bowling second. We explained to Nora how she had to hold down the button, swing her arm, and then release the button at the end of the swing. It was pretty complicated holding her finger on the button, swinging her arm, and pulling her finger off the button to demonstrate. About her third turn, her mother said, “Why doesn’t Nora use my remote instead?” I said, “No, that won’t work since we set up the game for her player to use my remote.” To which she repeated, “Why doesn’t Nora use my remote instead?” Aaaahh, yes! An excellent idea. So for the rest of the afternoon, we bowled with Nora swinging her mother’s remote while I, seated on the sofa with my remote hanging out of sight, flicked my wrist in time with Nora’s flailing. It worked perfectly. A little too perfectly, in fact, as Nora won almost every game. No matter what I did when playing for my character (Nora made me stand up and do it properly), I could never best the wrist flick that was controlling Nora’s ball.

Nora has begun a strange habit of asking for things with a negative question. For instance, rather than ask, “May I have a cookie?” she’ll say, “I can’t have a cookie, can I?” Rhetorically, it’s a terrible way to achieve your objectives. “You won’t hire me, will you?” isn’t going to advance your career. Negated boolean questions are also annoying because no one is ever clear what “yes” and “no” mean in response to them. The social norm is for “yes” as a response to “I can’t take my tricycle to the park, can I?” does not mean “That’s correct”, but it means, “That’s not true; yes, you can take your tricycle to the park.” It’s just confusing. Perhaps a case could be made that playing the poor “I never get what I want…” victim could be a potentially successful strategy, but it’s certainly not something I’d want to encourage. I suspect it’s just a phase, but it’s a strange one. Here it is in action:

Several weeks ago, at a local bar, the bartender gave her some chocolate euros, disc-shaped chocolates wrapped in foil to look like big 1€ coins. With no subsequent mention of them at all, weeks afterwards, she had some coins – she asks for money before she pretends to “go to work” in “her office” so that she can bring back the coins afterwards having “earned money at work” – and she started prying at them saying, “Let’s see what’s inside!” It took me several minutes to realize that she was referencing the chocolate euro coins from weeks earlier.

My two year old loves bar hopping. Often, as mentioned above, she will suggest we go in a bar that we walk past. She likes them because there are stools to climb on, flashing slot machines to bang on, and the bartenders often give her a little piece of bread or candy or something. I don’t need much of a push to enter a bar for a glass of wine, so she can be a dangerous influence on me. It sure is cute, though, when she says, “Let’s go to another bar!”

I’ve been trying to get her to apologize when she does something bad by accident, but it’s not going very well. She knows what to say when I prompt her, “What do you say?”, but with no prompting, she never initiates the apology herself. Today she did for the first time, but said the wrong thing. She said, “Poppy, I stepped on you by accident. It’s okay, I forgive you.” Hmmm…

As we finish out 2011, the state of the offspring is strong!

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