Archive for the ‘Genevieve’ Category

I somehow forgot to post this photo from mid-February, but it is hands down one of my favorite pictures ever. These are two of my three dearest loves.

Genna (21 mo) and her dad.

Tuesday was a snow day so I unexpectedly got to spend the day at home with my three girls. Hallie had an appointment and was out for a while in the morning so I spent some quality time with Genna while Mari was napping. Genna seemed really excited that I was home and that she had me all to herself for about an hour or so and I was really excited because I felt like this was the first time we have truly “played” in a reciprocal sense for a long period of time. We have done things together before where there has been some back and forth, but in the past few weeks she has suddenly turned into a little girl who imitates, imagines, speaks, and converses like never before. It’s fascinating how much she has changed in just a few weeks and being with her is suddenly a whole different ballgame.

Today we started our play with me in the play room and Genna in the hallway with a closed door between us. Genna would knock on the door and peek inside and I would ask who was there. She would then open the door and peek in at which point I would be really excited to see her, greet her accordingly and ask her to come in. She absolutely loved this and we must have reenacted this sequence at least five times at her prompting. Eventually, after coming in, I would ask her to sit down and then I would serve her some tea and cake with the tea set that she received from Hallie’s parents. We reenacted this a number of times as well with coffee, plates and Pooh bear being added into the mix over time. The scenario gradually became a bit more complicated each time we did it, until Genna was ready to move on to something new.

One of the recent skills that she has started to learn is throwing small objects. Thankfully, she has only thrown things that are intended to be thrown at this point. We have a number of small, white whiffle balls on hand and Genna and I started tossing one back and forth. She is getting pretty good at throwing and this occupied us for quite a while. I eventually added a second ball into the mix which made her squeal with delight as we tossed and rolled them back and forth. My favorite part of this was when one of the balls went under the changing table. She and I both crouched down on the floor, heads tilted, looking together to see where it went. I asked Genna if she could reach it and she stuck her arm out to no avail. I then tried and was able to grab the ball, and Genna showed her appreciation by clapping. This might be silly but it was really neat to be confronted by a “problem” like this and then solve it together as a father-daughter team. It was a lot of fun and it made me feel a new sense of closeness with her.

After the ball throwing I pulled out a color toy that she has. It’s a piece of wood with six colored posts sticking up. Each post has corresponding rings that can be pulled off. I dumped all the rings on the floor and had Genna go through them and put them on the proper post while I said the colors. She must have been trying to show off because she placed almost all of the twenty rings on the matching posts. She has never done this before and I was blown away. The interesting part of all of this is that she would often take a ring, place it over a post and say “No”, then move on to the next one. She almost always left the correct post until last, which tells me that she knew all along which one was correct. On the last post she would drop it and immediately start clapping because she knew it was the right color.

At this point Mari (up to this point quietly napping upstairs) was starting to stir, so I decided it was time for a father-daughter dance party. We spent the next ten minutes dancing like crazy people in the living room to “Ready to Go” by Republica and “1979″ by Smashing Pumpkins. Genna often imitated whatever goofy thing I was doing, but sometimes she would lead and I would do the crazy move that she was making up. We jumped, twirled, stomped and shook ourselves silly and then crashed together on the couch to rest for a few minutes before I went upstairs to get Mari.

Why do I relate all this? Honestly, it’s mostly so that I can remember it somewhere down the road. Sometimes I just need to write it all down and this blog is a logical place to do that. I don’t think Genna is doing anything that any other almost-two-year-old isn’t doing, but everything is new to me as she gets older and I am constantly fascinated by how much she is changing and learning right before my very eyes.

Miss Genevieve said her first intelligible sentence this morning: she pointed to the pumpkin bread on the counter and clearly stated, “I want to eat.” I didn’t have to figure it out; she enunciated very well, especially “eat” with a sharp “t” at the end. Interestingly, she threw in the hand sign for “eat” which she has never done before even though we began teaching it to her a year ago. I guess she wanted to make sure that I understood and that she got her wish!

Needless to say, I indulged and she enjoyed not one, but TWO small pieces of pumpkin bread.

Hooray for Genna! For her proud mama, it was like the end of a dawn and the start of real daylight.