Tuesday playdates at Clearwater School

Stacy and Johari

Ibrahim eating dirt and leaves

Ishmael's tongue roll

Ish, Zoe and Johari

Silly faces

Zoe

We go to playdates at Clearwater School on Tuesdays. It is fun. Often we play with Zoe who goes to the school. I love her. She is great fun to hang with. We help feed the chickens and play on the playground and go inside to the active room.

ponytails...

Snacking on the car after playing at Magnuson Park

So I am trying a new hair style of ponytails. Not so much because it is cute although it certainly ends up being pretty darn cute but more so because it seemed that it would keep her hair from getting tangled up so quickly. And it doesn't take too much effort and pain to do it.
She is pretending up a storm as usual. We can turn into monsters...she is the baby monster, I am the mama monster and Marvin is the grandpa monster. The other night when we were walking the dogs she was pretending to have an additional dog with her who she named Whistler. Then Barney Boy transformed into being Whistler. Now, sometimes both dogs at Whistler. Merlin Whistler and Barney Whistler.
She was trying to identify where Barney had bones and muscles the other day. He had bones in his legs and his other legs and his penis and his neck and his stomach!
She likes to ask about what's in it. "What's in it?" referring to her string cheese. "milk, enzymes, salt." "I am going to eat the milk in it. Is there pepper?" "Nope."
She is totally ready for her trip to West Africa. She talks about going there. She can explain that we have to go to German(y) first and then to Ghana. She asks if we can drive there but I let her know we can only drive to the airport and then we will have many airplane hours and hours. She is excited to go see Nawo, Christina and "her baby" Carmel. We have even checked out the globe a bit. And one time she seemed to point directly to the Ghana and Togo spot on the globe. I think it may have been a coincidence but I am not sure.
The other evening we were in the bookstore and she picked up this book and brought it to me and asked, "Can you read me In A Dark, Dark Room?" I was very stunned and confused. This was the name of the book, but we don't have that book! And I had never seen it and I asked if Grandma had ever read it to her in the store which she had not. I didn't think she was reading yet so I was truly baffled. I think I have figured it out now though.... she likes to look at the back of her books and see the pictures of the other books that the publisher is advertising for. She asks me what each book is and I read the titles to her. I think it must have been one of those little pictures of a book on one of her books and she just remembered what it looked like and what I told her it was called. Ah-ha!!!!

dinosaur dance clip

Laurie Berkner's dinosaur song. Johari, Ishmael and Ibrahim having a dance party. Pure joy!

tea or coffee video clip

Tea or coffee?

This is a clip from when we were playing in Grandpa Gary's downstairs. She always asks me "What funny, mommy?" if I chuckle or laugh or smile at something. Sometimes I have a hard time coming up with a suitable explanation for why I am laughing. She is just cute, so I laugh a lot in the joy of watching what she is doing and saying and being.

who is the baby now?

A couple nights ago, Johari and I started pretending that I was the baby and she was the mama. She took her job extremely seriously. I had to be discreet about helping her get her diaper and pj's on so as not to tread on the ego of the lil' mama. She even put me to bed and tried to wait a couple minutes quietly then she says quietly and in need, "nurse." She had to switch roles back for really going to bed. Then last night, her grandma was the baby and Johari was the mama and she decided that I was the "pawpaw". At first I couldn't figure out what she was meaning by this but then I realized that it is what Emma, Joey, and Julia across the street call their grandma, the Chinese word for grandma. She maintains the roles for quite a while, calling each person by their new title. If she starts to slip back to the real title, she will quickly catch herself.

Mr. Potato Head exhibit

Ibrahim with the potato heads

pics n Missoula and Spokane

Carousel in Spokane

Running statues in Spokane

Johari and Cousin Gale

Skyride in Spokane

The view from the skyride

some pics

Snuggling with Barney on the couch

Hardhat and fairy dress

Rummage sale score of trampoline in Missoula

Putting babies and bear to bead in their co-sleeper

love....

Well, it really has been a while since I have posted. And I end up thinking that I have too much to post about to actually ever do it. But I want to get back to posting so I will just try to let go of all that I might have let pass and not updated about. I will try to be in the now with what is going on.
In the mornings particularly but throughout the day as well, Johari will hug Barney Boy over and over and say, "I love him." over and over and over. Then, she tells me to say it as well. She can't get enough of expressing her love for Barney. She is also starting to talk about loving me sometimes. :) That feels good. Yesterday evening we were talking about loving lots of people. She wanted make sure that I love Ahdji-oudjou and Ahdji-oudjou's grandpa. I do. Then, the question has come up, "Why do you love me?" Or why does someone else love her. I haven't figured out a good answer for that one. I am totally stumped on how to describe why people love her. Everything that I come up with seems so surface or just a miniscule part of the whole love picture.
We are totally into singing and dancing. We were doing the "Hokey Pokey" a whole lot after we came back from our roadtrip to Missoula, Montana to visit Grandpa Gary and Granny Em. Sometimes we trade off between "Here We Go Loobi-Loo" and "Hokey Pokey" over and over. She likes to put her whole self in the best! She is also really into, "Where Is Thumbkin?" "Wheels on the Bus" and "Twinkle Stars" are still in the mix.
Johari asks about "Who gave me that..." about anything and everything. I am not sure if that is what she is getting at or where something came from and how it came to be in the world. We can be sitting in the family room and she will ask, "Who gave me those lights (the ones installed in the ceiling)?" or "Who gave me the floor?" She will definitely keep me thinking with all her thinking.
I realized the other day that I can't even imagine all that this girl understands. She will say something that just blows me away and makes me realize that I probably totally underestimate all that she is getting and picking up on. She was talking the other day about how Barney was from a rescue and whether another dog was from a rescue. She hung out with her grandma this past weekend because I worked a temporary job for the first time. Things went really well with her and there was no real upsets. Anyway, Sunday, Johari and her grandma were heading to a Baha'i Center that was closing to buy a few things. On the drive there, her grandma offered to get her something. Without given any choices or prompting, she told her grandma that she would like to get a prayer book. This blew me away because her exposure to prayer books is not particularly frequent or direct just sometimes when she is around an event that her grandma is having or something we go to with grandma.
We finally got back to the Children's Museum in Seattle a couple of times recently. They have a fun Mr. Potato Head exhibit. I think we will start using it more often with the winter coming.
She told me recently that she wanted me to paint her toenails with her regular paint set. And then her fingernails too. She wanted to do this over and over for a few days. It doesn't stay on at all because it is just washable paint. I got her some "safe" nail polish and we painted our toes with Stacy one night. We all have sparkly beautiful toes. She said, "I need to paint my toes!" Who would have thought that my child would end up saying that at age 2? I am following her lead on this. She is the intiator. I am just the support and enjoying it immensely.
We have gone to 2 playdates at the school I really like called Clearwater. Although not many other parents and preschool kids show up, we both enjoy playing at the school and meeting kids that go there and talking to the staff and just beginning a relationship with the school.
Johari loves to tell the story of how things happened and kind of act it all out. When she was telling Stacy about me going to work, she said something like, "Mama go to work and she went out to her car like this." Then acted out a funny walk out to my car. She is quite a comic!
I know pictures are desired. I will get back with that soon.