ribbit, nanabooboo

It has been a long time since I posted and as usual, Johari is up to a whole lot. And I guess I am, too! And at the moment, Blogger isn't letting me upload pictures! So I will start with some of the things that aren't related to any pictures.
Johari likes to "meet" me. She tells me to meet her and then we are to take different paths to end up at the same place.
For a while she was practicing, hopping on one foot which looked more like holding one leg while she balanced on the other.
She enjoys pretending to be many different animals these days. We will be driving along in the car and from the backseat, "Ribbit! Ribbit!" She's turned into a frog. Then, "Woof, woof!" I have a dog along for the ride. She pants with her tongue hanging out like a dog, too. Or she told me yesterday that she was putting her "paw" on something. Sometimes she is a horse with a "neigh neigh" and a gallop. Or when we are at the playground and she is practicing hanging from a bar, she told me that she was a monkey and she said, "Oooooo oooo". Then one day she was wading in the pond and she said that she is a penguin and did the penguin waddle and sign. The pig in her came out the other day as well, "oink"! She will flap her wings sometimes when she is a bird and say that she is going to "fly away".
She likes to pretend that things are ice cream. So sometimes, I pretend that her toes are ice cream. She likes this. I make up some flavors. But if I ask her what the flavor of anything is it is ALWAYS orange at this point. Then another time we were working on clipping toenails and I must have mentioned the "baby toe" as I call it because then she started calling the big toe, "mama toe" and the one next to it, "sister toe".
One night before we were going to bed, she wanted to sing "The Wheels on the Bus". And she has a few verses that she still particularly likes... the mama saying "shhhh" and the baby saying "wahhh". She decided to create a few new verses as well. One is about Stacy.... it goes, "Stacy on the bus goes 'hold you', 'hold you',..." And the other is about Ibrahim..."Ibrahim on the bus goes eat, eat,..."
The other night I was trying to figure out something that she was saying. It came to me finally that she was saying, "nanabooboo". I thought to myself how would she possibly know that taunting phrase, "na na boo boo". So I asked her who said it and she told me that Emma said it and Lua as well. So I realized that Emma and Lua have liked to get Johari to chase them recently so they probably have been playing around and saying that in the chasing games. The way Johari says it randomly and sweetly is pretty darn cute.
Another thing that I have been trying to figure out what she is saying is when she is skipping around. She would say something that sounds like "sssssh". I think I have figured it out! "Ashes, ashes" while she is skipping. I guess skipping or more like galloping reminds her of "Ring Around the Rosie" when you say "...ashes, ashes we all fall down." So she just gallops and says "ashes, ashes, ashes!"
Her assertiveness is coming out in a new phrase. If she doesn't like what someone is telling her. Let's say you are telling her that she shouldn't be doing something that she wants to be doing, she tells you, "Don't talk to me, [fill in your name or title to her here]!" She says it calmly but firmly. It is a clear message. It is pretty cool, really!
One evening when we couldn't find the moon in the sky, Johari said that the moon is at the farm.

Notes on me.... I have gone through a detox from carbs and sugar. I am off caffeine. I am trying to walk in the late evening with the long days and it feels great when I can really get a vigorous walk on. I was generously given some classes from my friend, Twitney, to try out Dahn yoga. And so I have gone to a few classes and enjoy them. I am reading. Just finished "Sputnik Sweetheart". Beginning John Gatto's "Dumbing Us Down". A balance between fiction and non-fiction going on here. I have found a school that I am really excited about learning more about. It is modeled after the Sudbury School model. The school is called Clearwater and it is not far from where we live. I am so excited to learn more about that sometimes it even gives me goosebumps thinking about the concepts behind it.