Meet Ahdji-oudjou

One morning just when Johari had woken up, she says to me, "Where is the moon?" When I turned the question around for her to speculate, she replied, "It went home to sleep."
She has been asking where people's moms are a lot lately. Where is Aunt Shaye's mom? Where is Chrissy's mom? Where is Sasha's mom? So when I asked her where her mom was, she thought about it for a bit and then said, "California". (This was while we were there.)
While we were visiting Soraya, she took us out to her parents place an hour outside of L.A. They board animals and rescue them as well. So they had a llama, goat, sheep, miniature horse, several large horses, and dogs. She was really pumped up to get there and check out the horses. While we were there, out of the blue she says, "I love pigs. Baby pigs." I haven't heard her using the word 'love' much before this. I guess pigs bring out the love in her.
Johari's imagination started with pretending to get people apples about 6 months ago and it has only expanded since then. There are still pretend apples in her play. She goes to the store to get them and she cooks them and she feeds them to people. She also pretends that we are taking the bus to places. We usually pretend to take the bus to the book store or the shoe store. At the pretend book store, she might pick up a book on dolphins and at the book store, she will get some orange shoes for me, herself, and Merlin, the dog. She even has an imaginary friend that developed recently. It is a girl named, Ahdji-oudjou. She had come up with that phrase (which sometimes sounds more like Eedji-oudjou) when we were in Montana last and continued to say it often, but then in the last couple weeks Ahdji-oudjou took on more personality. Sometimes Johari pretends to drive us to Adhji-oudjou's house which is "faraway". Or Ahdji-oudjou will come over to play at our house with our toys. Ahdji-oudjou took a bath with us and her mom did, too! Ahdji-oudjou will sit on Johari's lap in the carseat.
She also likes to pretend to put worms in my coffee or in other things. And then I must react with serious disgust while I drink worms! Worms are starting to be in lots of things and they taste YUCKY!
She was pretending to be a dog the other morning. She said the dog (herself) needed water as ALL dogs do. When I gave her a small bowl of water on the ground, she tried to lap it up like a dog.
Johari loves to hang from things now. That is one of her favorite activities at the park. It seems like she can hang on for a pretty long time.
Two things that I hear repeated many times throughout the day, "Where, mommy?" and "What's that noise?" I tell her about something I am seeing and point it out to her. "Where, mommy?" "Over there" while pointing to it or explaining where something is if it out of sight. "Where, mommy?" And I repeat or change my answer a bit. She asks me over and over. And then when I turn it around she points it out or tells me the answer. I think that the repetitive thing is just her getting it all recorded clearly in her mind or learning how to say the answers as well.
When she wanted to say "sneeze", she did a pretend cough as her word for it.
While we were walking around Soraya's neighborhood in L.A., we saw a poster with a picture of Barack Obama. I pointed it out to her. We did the "Where?" routine. Later, she said that she wanted to see "that guy" and I asked her if it was Ilchi Lee who has been "that guy" for a while. But she was not referring to Ilchi Lee this time. She wanted to see "Rock O Mama" aka Barack Obama.
She asked for "sunflower nuts" the other day.
She likes it when people roll their tongue or can make a clover shape with the tongue. She does her own version of just sticking out her tongue.
The other night was a full moon. Johari called it a Mama Moon and said the Baby Moon had gone to the park.
She clearly knows when she is ready to go somewhere or leave a place and when she is not. She says, "I am ready to go now." or not.
Soraya had several Buddha statues at her place. Johari took a small one to the park with her. Johari called the happy Buddha with its arms stretching to sky, Mama Buddha. I am guessing because it looks like it has nyo-nyo's.