Jill dot com

Last night we were driving home from the bookstore. Johari was on one of her play phones. Here is what she said on her phone...
" Hi, Ahdji-oudjou.
Get the message (meaning she got Ahdji-oudjou's message).
Hi.
In the car.
In the car.
Going home...."

On the way to the beach today to meet Stacy, Ish and, Ibe, Johari asked me, "Stacy love me?"

I think she has always been really observant, but now she wants to get it all down. She wants to develop her language to go along with all of her observations. "What's that?" or "What's that called?" is her regular question. She wants to know who everyone is. What they are up to. What are the words for everything she sees in books, in life, everywhere. She is noticing subtleties about people. We were in Target cafe and she noticed an older woman whose head shook slightly and she acted out what she was noticing to me. Or if someone walks with a particular gait maybe stooped over.

She was saying my name, "Jill", the other day and when I figured out what she was saying she gave a sheepish grin.

One morning when we woke up, she said, "Dot com. I want to watch signing times dot com." Dot com is already a part of her vocabulary because people say it often in advertisement and promotional things. Wow!

One day we were sitting on the front porch and she mentioned Poppy Wise. As I often have to do, I scan my brain for what she is referring to. Then I remembered that there is a book that we haven't read very often that has a character named Poppy Wise in it. We hadn't read it recently. And I just thought about I can't even imagine what all is going on in that brain of hers.

Books she has been into lately..."Don't Take Your Snake For a Stroll". She calls it the "Scared of Snake book" because she is fascinated by a few pages where people are ridiculously scared of this kid walking a snake. "Strega Nona" has been a regular read lately and she wants to know who all these townspeople are. I can't usually read the book rather I am just answering the question "What's that?" for various parts of the book. Who is each person and so on. We just got "Tar Beach" which is a pretty nice book.