ava loves that her cash register is also a calculator (thank you grandma). she has finally slowed down with the button pushing to figure out the operations, and will spend a good chunk of each day teaching herself basic mathematical truths. it seems self evident to an adult, but learning that 2+3 is 5 when you count on your fingers and it is 5 when you use a calculator, and it is 5 when you use an abacus is pretty interesting to a 4-year old. she ran up to me today and said "mommy! mommy! 5 and 5 really IS 10!"

her pride when she has learned something is so huge. she gets very excited and says "mommy! i LEARNED something!"

so, after she told me that 5 and 5 was 10, i said "what is 10 and 10?" she paused for just a moment and then her whole face changed--"20!" she blurted. "20 and 10?" "30!" "30 and 10?" "40!" -- and on we went, counting by 10s all the way to 100. her joy in seeing this pattern for the first time was just oozing out of her.

and it is so interesting, because i have casually tried to see if she recognizes the 10s when counting--without drumming it into her or anything, and until today, the #s from 1 to 100 were just this vast string of disconnected parts. we would do lots of counting, but from her stumbles i could see that it just was not yet clear. suddenly, this evening, it all came together for her.

as for her health, the doctor thinks she has been hit very hard by whatever virus nailed her last week. give it another week, and if her mystery pains do not resolve, then we will initiate testing.

carter has finally begun to say "oh" when stringing together his "whys." now he does not keep asking ad infinitum, but after tracing back the etiology of why we need to wear socks with boots to the fact that our part of the earth is just farther from the sun in winter, he will finally acquiesce and cheerfully say "oh!" and then we can finally leave the house.

tonight he accidentally bit his finger at dinner. he was very upset, asked for a kiss, etc., then very seriously looked down at his hand, and said "sorry, finger."

"hey carter! did you know that these flowers are really alive? yes. they are. they are drinking this water. see down there--the stems? see where they are cut? they are slurping up that water (slurping noise) just like a straw! and then it goes up into them, and through their intestines and around and around and around and into their body, up here!"

my back is out. as in totally out. last night i was getting around on my hands and knees. this is problematic for anyone, but i have to say it is remarkably difficult with small children. hands and knees=horse for kids. there were a lot of "oh noooooooooooo! pleeeaaaase don't climb on me!"

i went to the dr today. pretty much what i figured--medicine that i really cannot take and instructions to lie flat. ok. sure thing. that is possible.

ha.

i figured out that i can move around as long as i do it in a 'footloose' side shuffle. so i look a little like i am doing the twist (from the knee down) as i serve dinner, but it works.

however, it did not work fast enough to stop the dog from snatching carter's pumpTerNiCLE! bagel, the last pumpTerNiCLE! bagel in the house. oh, he was distraught. so distraught he frightened rosie into dropping in her water bowl, making it even worse. "give baaaaack pumpTerNiCLE baGEL! mommy! give back! ooooooooohhhhhhhh mommy! water! dry off please! dry oooooofffffffffffffffffffffffff!" i had to replace it with a plain bagel, which when accompanied with a hug seemed to fix the situation. "fank oooooo mommy."

meanwhile, i still shake my head over how much both kids like pumpTerNiCLE! bread.

we managed to get through the day, albeit with a lot more DVDs, ("DVDVs") than i usually like, and it did help that i spent most of the day in a healthcare provider's office, and since carter is giving up his naps (sort of), we all got in bed early. which is the only place that i don't feel pain. unfortunately, when i have been in bed for a long time, it is 50,000x worse when i do stand up. hopefully that won't be til tomorrow AM.

and this is coming after ava's major GI thing--just as she got better, this happened. and then yesterday (warning: the following is a poop story), ava plunked down on her little potty, and when she announced she was all done, i went to her to ensure all was fresh and clean and to get rid of the evidence. when she stood up i nearly fell over. her poop was white. almost completely white. not good. at that moment, we had no power, so i could not look up what it meant, but i was remembering something about bilirubin etc., and so i called my dad who reassured me that it was probably just the fact that she had cleaned herself out, had not had much intake, therefore no bile, etc. later, because i cannot rest without figuring out the very very worst case scenario, this seemed to be a relatively common thing post-viral infection, but i still was feeling like her dr. should be made aware of it. she was not concerned either, but she did say if things get worse, or she has another white poop, call back.

today? white poop. beige, really. so, i called, it was the dr's day off, they would call me in the morning unless she really felt it was important for ava to be seen today.

so, it looks like we may be in for another round of doctors tomorrow.

my off the wall suspicion? hepatitis a. that may be crazy, but in december i had almost the exact same constellation of symptoms as she had (barring the white poop). it is possible for it to have taken this long for her to become symptomatic, and she complained of stomach pains for a loooooooong time before actually getting sick. and clearly there is some sort of hepatobilliary involvement with her. anyway, perhaps it is an insane conclusion, but it makes a teeny bit of sense to me.

whatever is going on with her, she is very very very clingy and emotional these days.

on the up side, she is reading more and more--she spontaneously 'gets' words. not more than a few each day, but it is making more and more sense to her. when we read books she knows where i am--she may not be able to read it herself, but she can follow along. she can see certain words and somehow she just knows them--it is like she does it without thinking, which is great. yesterady it was 'green' -- before she had a chance to think too hard, she blurted it out. it is very interesting how this is coming together almost without conscious awareness as to exactly how it all works. she is definitely making a conscious effort--this is something she is pretty determined to do--but she would never be able to explain how she is doing it. i just wonder if carter will follow the same pattern, or if he will learn differently.

in the midst of all this, carter has been fine, completely focused on counting. he makes towers of things--anything-and counts the pieces. 'mommy! tower!look look! WOW. one two fee four fiVE six seven eight nine.....seven eight nine...." "ten, honey" "TEN! fank oooo mommy. ten. one two fee four five six seVEN eight nine TEN!"

ava has been vomiting nonstop for 3 hours now. fortunately she practically does it in her sleep at this point. and nothing is coming out. and she is in pain. it has not been a pleasant night.

something i keep forgetting to write about:

carter just won't say "snow"

i have no idea why. it is "ice" -- of course, yes, it is ice. so when ava gets up in arms and insists it's snow, and he insists just as vehemently that it is ice, i can say with authority that they are both right.

but the funny part is that he substitutes ice for snow in every instance. so, it is not a snowboard, it is an iceboard. and an iceman, and an icecat and an ice ball, and an icemobile. NO ONE has ever used these terms, and even when he says them, we all usually say, yes! there goes the snowcat, off to groom the mountain....it is very interesting.

he even makes it a verb: "mommy! icing!"

as for ava, tonight she asked me "why are they called starbursts, mommy? they're square. shouldn't they be 'squarebursts? or, if you turn them a little they could be diamondbursts...but they are not stars."

i don't know, ava. all i can explain is the 'burst' part of the name. that i know for certain is because it is a 'burst of refreshing fruit flavor for you!'

but the commercials never addressed the shape. perhaps we should write a letter.

The Story of the Weeping Camel: A documentary about a mongolian family and their camels, particularly one that rejects its calf. Otherwise known as the most interesting movie that Ava has ever seen.

"Mom-this happened a long time ago, right?"

"Nope! It was filmed after you were born."

Nothing could have been more fascinating to her than to see regular family dynamics (crying toddler, bath time for the 4-year-old, dinner, playing) in the most foreign setting imaginable. A yurt. In the Gobi desert. Clothes, food, activities, decor (for lack of a better word, and their yurt was pretty cool inside anyway), routines--all were amazingly different. Not to mention the camels. I never knew so much about camels. Ava is now a camel expert.

I had no idea if it would prove to be interesting when I popped it in, but neither of use could peel ourselves away from it. Carter also enjoyed it, particularly the baby camels (did you know their humps are floppy when born?).

And, in keeping with the toddler difficulty with the hard "c" -- most often replaced with a "t," Carter now runs around the house and yells "Tamel movie!!!" "Watch tamel movie!" "Baby tamels!!!!"

The name fascination continues. "Mama? This? Name?" but I think I have forgotton to mention the "nice" line of questioning..."Mama? Him? Man? (yes) Name? (I don't know) Him? Nice? Nice. Man?" "Mama? This? Nice?" and then their is safe: "Mama? This? Safe?" But i finally got him to ask a the checkout man at Noris, the health-food store, what his name was. It was barely audible, no more than a whisper, but he did it. He looked at the man and said "Please? Name?"

But the best part is he always repeats the name of an item after I furnish it. So, "mama? this? name?" is always followed by something like "matterhorn. hmmmmmm. nice? nice mountain? yes? yes. nice. like. matterhorn. big! big mountain. name? matterhorn. matterhorn. hmmmmm. nice big mountain! like!!"

in the span of 6 weeks carter has gone from saying practically NOTHING (and that which he said was in a secret mommy-carter language) to using pronouns, correct verb tenses, expressing abstract concepts, and being completely obsessed with naming things:

"mommy? this? name is?"

"mommy? him? name is?"

"mommy? her? name is?"

he also likes to describe himself: "carter--fast eater! num num num num!" (a la cookie monster). "me! BIG. hockey player!" (mom silences internal scream of anguish). "mom! watch this!" (please let him not be more than 3 feet off the ground)..."mom! i tooting!"

the use of the personal pronoun 'I' is a very recent development. before its introduction, he spent hours practicing in his car seat. "I. i. IIIIII. i. I. i's? i. I."

and as of yet, he has not identified "mine" as the appropriate 1st person posessive. he still likes "me's"

he still does not understand that i don't automatically know the name of every human we meet or see, but i have suggested that he can ask them. he has not taken me up on that. and interestingly, he identifies adults by their status as parents of kids he knows. even in the absence of the child. so, instead of trina, he says 'chase's mom' and instead of jim he says 'sophies dad' -- i should not be surprised, i do the same thing. i have to drum parent's names into my brain. it is all so interesting. he is so so so interested in how everything connects. AND he is unbelievably affectionate. which is so great.

speaking of learning, ava 'reads' over my shoulder when i read the dragon book--Eragon. There are NO pictures, and the text is microscopic. but every night she scans the pages intently. months ago she started grilling me about how much we had already read, and how much was left, and then one day asked me basically where i started on the page, and where i went, and when i turned the page (--ie, left to right, top to bottom, then to the top again, etc), and then 2 nights ago, she asked me about the spaces--she noticed a dash, and she said "there's a space..." and i explained that it was a dash, and that the empty spaces between the letters were the "spaces" and that they demarcated the words, and then she asked me about a period, and then a comma. She has also asked me about the groupings of words that are the paragraphs. it is very interesting, and a curious way to approach reading--sort of like from the outside in. it is clear to her that reading involves a lot more than just stringing together the sounds of letters. i think this is good. she can recognize familiar words, and she is completely obsessed with writing, but the code has not yet been broken.

however--perhaps this is not revolutionary--but the other evening i stopped at a coffee shop, and she said "mom! it's open! that sign in the window says "open!" that is not a word that we have discussed ad infinitum, and i have never said "this sign says open..." it could have just as easily been the name of the store--it was not a typical generic open/closed sign.

so, it is all starting to gel.

tomorrow ava returns to school, and then we will go ski, i think. last time we went, ava and i were in the chair lift and there is a section of woods that is officially a blue square trail--the 'glades' -- lots of little kids zoom in and out, and she begged me to go do it. i hedged, hemmed and hawed. then when we got off the lift, dad was all for it. ok, with his agreement, i was fine with it, albeit a bit nervous.

it was like she had done it a thousand times. zoom zoom zoom. pick a line and stick it. trees? what trees? wooo hooo! i was literally gaping.

she does not rave about skiing like she raves about skating, but my god. next year she will be hucking herself off cliffs. her father put it best:

"i see a full-face helmet in her future..."

personally, i see 2 full face helmets. carter starts skating next week. test runs demonstrate that he is desperate to fly across the ice. no matter the consequence.

it is so illuminating to watch them take control of their bodies and minds.

This morning, I took Ava to the doctor. No big deal, we were basically on a fact-finding mission, to follow-up on a chronic problem. All went well, we returned home, and went on with our day.
This evening, we were all snuggled in bed, ready to read the next few pages of her dragon book (Eragon—a very advanced book, most of which goes over her head, and much of which has to be edited on the fly due to some unsettling violence, but which she totally enjoys and seems to glean enough of the plot to follow along. And Carter also seems to be enjoying it—he knows the name of the dragon, and always picks it up and says “important book.”), and as I was just about to start, she said “Mom?”

I put the book down and said “yes?” –she paused, seemed to summon her thoughts, and with wildly gesturing hands asked “The doctors—how do they know?”

Hmmmmm….”What do you mean, Ava?”

“Just, how do they know?”

“Know how to take care of you?”

“yes. How—WHERE does that come from? ”

Suspecting that this was not simply the question “How do you become a doctor?” and more of an epistemological query, I hesitated, then decided to go with the straightforward mechanics of becoming a doctor, since that seemed to be the right point of entry to this clearly philosophical issue. So, without going into too much depth, I talked a bit about medical school.

“But how do the TEACHERS know what to tell them? Do they just KNOW?”

Now we were getting somewhere.

“No, they had to learn from someone else, who also had to learn from someone else…” and I sort of dramatized the transmission of knowledge, but knew I could not just stop there, because that left out the beginning—where did the knowledge START? So, I explained, again as simply as I could, and without calling it as such, the concept of the Scientific Method. And then I made the point that doctors and scientists were always learning, and adding to that nebulous floating body of knowledge.

She was almost satisfied—but now she wanted to know how the doctors learned it—how they understood it—and that of course was the simple part, in which I was able to accurately explain the process of learning step by step, in increments, leading to more and more difficult and/or complex concepts. This was easily illustrated with a skating example—a year ago, she could not do 3 waltz jumps, and now she can, because she learned all of the little steps that go into that nifty little trick.

It was a very interesting conversation, and a nice little window into her mind. I did not bother to tell her that she was grappling with a question that has been pondered for 1000s of years, and to which an entire branch of philosophy has been devoted.

What was very interesting was that she was clearly trying to discern if knowledge was an entity in and of itself--distinct from the knower.

For his part, Carter seems to like pronouns a lot. And he is very preoccupied with names. “Carter? Name?” “Saphira? Name?” (The dragon), “Ava, name?” – Sort of clarifying the difference between specific names and more general pronouns and labels (he, she, this, hers, brother, sister…).
And he apparently likes mustard a lot. Enough to eat spoonfuls of it. NOT my idea, nor initiated by me. I came upon the scene mid-swallow. I had to turn my head to gag, frankly.