Two of the closing items from my last update --- that Ellie was saying multi-word phrases but not sentences, and that she counted to two but no higher --- were out of date within a week. Two months later, I no longer remember what those first few sentences were, though the designation of "first sentence" is even more ambiguous then the designation of "first word." But it's another radical transition, since for the first time she says things that she has never heard before, and she can surprise us not just with her imitations but with her inventions. More on this later.
One evening in early June, having shown no interest in numerical matters beyond her common phrase "one-two both," Ellie suddenly launched into "One, two, free, four, six, seben, nine," each number called out vigorously with a rising, sing-song intonation that have remained characteristic of her counting. We figured that this was an impressive start on higher mathematics, and that five and eight were random omissions that would make the list next time around. Interestingly enough, however, Ellie still resolutely avoids five and eight every time she counts. We have tried hard to persuade her of their virtues, but to no avail. Maybe she skips them deliberately as a minor act of defiance --- we can correct her all we want, but she doesn't have to go along. Maybe she has counter's block. Or maybe she has decided that the order followed in her numerous counting books is just an arbitrary cultural convention, and that if SHE wants to go from four to six and seven to nine, it's her choice. (Kind of charming in a two-year old, but this attitude towards mathematics becomes annoying when it's applied by the college students in my introductory astronomy classes ...)
As the title of this update suggests, we spent the month of July, and the first half of June, in Paris, just like last year. In both cases, Ellie changed a lot during these six weeks. Last year she went soon after taking her first unassisted steps and returned as a proficient walker. This year she went soon after saying her first sentences, and she has returned as something of a chatterbox. In detail, her grammar is often as conventional as her counting to ten, but she can say fairly complicated things nonetheless, like "Pooh's make it da boo-boo better Ellie's." (Translation: Her Winnie-the-Pooh band-aid is making the cut on her finger better). "Ball, hold it, Ellie" or "Book, take-it-away, Mama" are examples of common Ellie syntax, though there are lots of variants ("Ellie's hold it, da ball") and plenty of sentences that would make a grade-school teacher happy ("Ellie caught it," "I want it") or nearly happy ("Ellie's go home see Mama right now").
Ellie describes what she sees or narrates what she is
doing, and she recounts the events of the day, or her
life. Admittedly, it often takes a fair amount of
guesswork on our part to figure out what she is saying,
since many of her words still sound alike, and she rarely
sticks to one theme for long, so any given sentence could
refer to something that is going on now, something that
happened a long time ago, or something that she wants to
do in the future. But if she says something, she often
wants us to confirm our understanding by responding
intelligently or repeating it in corrected English, and if
we have guessed wrong, then she keeps saying the sentence
or phrase until we get it right. This practice is
probably helping Ellie puzzle out grammar, but we think
she mostly wants to be sure that we are paying due
attention to what she has to say. If we can't guess
right, then the cycle can go on for quite a while,
getting louder with each repetition:
"Elisfeetacoats."
"Are your feet cold? Do you want to put on socks?"
"Elisfeetacoats!"
"Yogurt? Do you want a yogurt?"
"Elisfeetacoats!!!"
"Oh... Did Ellie feed the goats at the zoo?"
(Ellie nods.)
When we are thoroughly stumped, we try to just repeat her
sounds as exactly as we can, on the theory that she knows
what she said and will assume that we have figured it out.
This trick never works.
Amusing examples come and go, sometimes lasting a day or two, sometimes weeks. One of our favorite early ones, admittedly more in the stock phrase category than the sentence category, was "How'y'ooo?" We would always respond "I'm good" or "I'm good, thank you," but Ellie soon decided that she could save us the effort by responding herself --- "How'y'ooo? I'm good," and then she went for maximal efficiency by shortening the phrase to "How'y'ooo?-good." She still ALWAYS says "one/two" instead of "two," and "one/two both" instead of "both." She still avoids "I" and "me," referring to herself as "Ellie" (or sometimes "you"). And after thinking about it for many months, she has mastered the various meanings of too/two, e.g., "take it too, da ball," "too hot," and "one/two crackers."
Shortly after the last update, we went to visit Lisa's brother and family in Indiana, giving Ellie a chance to again meet Uncle Bruce, Aunt Cathy, cousins Mitchell and Rachel, and (visiting from California) Grandpa George and Grandma Yupa, all of whom she last saw roughly half her life ago. The highlight of this trip was Ellie's first horse ride, on Rachel's horse Major. Ellie had met Major in the barn early in the day, and we saw lots of horses at the show Rachel was riding in that afternoon. But despite repeated offers of rides, Ellie stuck with watching and patting for most of the day. Just as we were getting ready to go home for the evening, Cathy asked Ellie one more time if she wanted to ride Major, and to our surprise she nodded yes. She proceeded to walk around on Major for the next 20 minutes, looking very serious but clearly proud of herself. The story of Ellie riding Major has been told and retold many times since, reinforced by the little horse backpack that Rachel gave to Ellie. (The backpack is, of course, named Major.)
We got to Paris June 20, staying in the same apartment as last time. Needless to say, it felt a lot smaller with a 2-year old than it had with a 1-year old, and although Ellie would often walk some or even all of the five flights of stairs, she was that much heavier when she didn't. But the location was ideal. Like last year, Lisa and I traded off mornings and afternoons, one of us parenting and the other working. After 9 months of day care, it was great for Ellie and for us to spend so much time together. But with Ellie much more mobile than last year and much less willing to spend time in her stroller, she could pretty well exhaust either one of us in half a day.
Our regular circuit of daily outings included some of the same places as last year and some new additions. The Jardin du Luxembourg was just two blocks away, including the fountain/pond with ducks to feed and rentable toy sailboats to push around (we only tried this once, as Ellie proved more interested in the stick than the boat), the "little playground" with sandbox and slides, the big, pay-to-play playground with a wider variety of entertainments, and, the biggest hit of all, a wading pool. A 25-minute walk would get us to the Jardin des Plantes, with a nice zoo, various places to run around, and a good crepe and ice cream stand. A new discovery this year was the Arenes de Lutece, a park built on the grounds of a Roman-era arena, with many stone steps to climb, a sandy circular lot on which Ellie could practice her soccer alongside the local youth, and a playground that always seemed miraculously uncrowded. At the Pompidou Center, one of our regular haunts from last year, Ellie's new and primary interest was riding the escalators up and down. (Somehow, this isn't nearly as interesting to an adult.) We were about 20 minutes walk from Notre Dame, which has a playground on the side and a small park behind. This was especially popular during the first two weeks of our stay, when our friends Michael and Sofia were visiting Paris with their 11 year old son, Alexandro, and their 3 1/2 year old daughter, Camilla. We would often meet up with them outside of Notre Dame, and Ellie, Camilla, and Alexandro would chase each other around the park. After they had left for Italy, Ellie would still say "Camilla ... running" every time we went by Notre Dame. For the final week and a half we also had "Paris-Plage" (Paris beach) on the road that runs by the Seine, complete with thousands of tons of trucked in sand, palm trees, picnic areas, music and performances, and, most important from Ellie's point of view, numerous opportunities to get soaking wet.
We also made some more ambitious outings on weekends. The Jardin d'Acclimatation is a delightful amusement park on the outskirts of the city. Ellie had great fun riding with us on the merry-go-round and a mechanical horse ride that followed a long track through trees and bushes, sitting in the front of a small boat that followed a stream through the center of the park ("Ellie's lead da way, boat"), and taking advantage of one of the few Paris playgrounds with swings. The two highlights, however, were the trampolines, which Ellie adores, and a large space where kids could run through jets of spraying water. (As you may have gathered already, Ellie's obsession with water just grows stronger as she gets older and finds more opportunities to indulge it.) On the other side of the city, Parc de la Villette has a giant science museum with special sections for 2-5 year olds and 6-12 year olds, and the 2-5 year old "Cite des Enfants" was a big hit. The first time we were there, we heard another parent encouraging her son in the unmistakable voice of Jodie Foster (neither of us had recognized her behind her sunglasses, but we both knew who it was when we heard her speak). Later, when she was ready to leave and her son wasn't, she used a line that we imagine we will be borrowing for years to come: "You know what? You don't HAVE to want to go."
We went with Michael, Sofia, Alexandro, and Camilla to the Chateau (and, more memorably, the grounds) of Chantilly. It was a beautiful day, and we learned by direct and delicious experience that Creme Chantilly really is better when you have it at the source. Near the end of our stay, we went with our friends Hans-Walter and Marybeth to the gardens of Versailles, with highlights that included a mini-train ride around the perimeter, Ellie's first ride in a rowboat, and the Sunday afternoon musical accompaniment to the spectacular Versailles fountains.
In the middle of our stay, we went to England for a week, staying mostly in London, where my parents were also visiting. One of the highlights was visiting the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain in Hyde Park on its opening day. The "fountain" is a 100-foot, oval, sunken marble ring set on a mild slope with water coursing through it. Visitors are encouraged to wade, and Ellie did so enthusiastically. We had not come prepared with swim gear, so we learned just how heavy a diaper can become when it is maximally waterlogged --- pretty much a Huggies bowling ball. We went to Cambridge for a couple of days while I was attending a conference, so Ellie got to meet various of our astronomer friends from around the world, and to see some of our old Cambridge haunts from the year that we lived there. Mostly she saw them in the pouring rain, but that's how we remember Cambridge anwyay. We visited my grandmother in Brighton, and through fortunate timing this gave Ellie the chance to meet three generations of her cousins. It also provided her first view of the ocean (the English Channel, anyway, which seems close enough to count). Unfortunately, it was a classic July day in Brighton --- chilly and windy --- and Brighton's beaches consist of small pebbles that are very painful to walk on in bare feet. As a result, Ellie only got to dip her toes in the water for a few minutes, before her parents insisted on retreating to the promenade. She was immensely frustrated to watch ALL THAT WATER from a distance, and for the rest of the afternoon she would make breaks for the beach whenever she saw a set of access stairs, and would wail "ocean" piteously when we stopped her. We did at least find her another trampoline.
Ellie learned just a few words of French this year. She picked up bonjour, au revoir, and merci quite quickly, and those were enough to get her a long way. She picked up some more concrete phrases from videos and TV: "chapeau de Dipsy" (Dipsy's hat) and "sac a dos" (backpack, the theme of a recurrent song on "Dora L'Exploratrice"). We had a couple of good instances of bilingual confusion. Once when someone rolled her soccer ball back to her in the park, I told her to say "merci." She said it very nicely, then bent over to stick her hands in the mud puddle next to her, splashed them back and forth, and said (with enthusiasm) "messy!" The mixup of merci and messy happened several times in the first couple of weeks; since Ellie thinks of messy as a GOOD thing, maybe she considers it a perfectly natural way for the French to say thank you. Our favorite example occurred when Lisa took Ellie to "Le Poussin Vert" (The Green Chick), the pay-to-enter playground at Jardin du Luxembourg. On the way in, Ellie didn't want to get her hand stamped, but after admiring Lisa's green chick for the morning, she decided she wanted to get a stamp on the way out. Lisa asked if she could, and the attendant said "d'accord" (OK). Ellie decided that he had said "ducko," presumably in reference to the chick, and she pointed out her "ducko" stamp until it faded from sight a day or two later. From then on she (and we) referred to Le Poussin Vert as the ducko playground.
Other than sentences, the most interesting development of the last two months has been imaginary play. This began with Ellie offering us make-believe cookies and cups of tea. Now she has mostly moved on to offering us Tubby Toast (the Teletubbies favorite food, along with the messier Tubby Custard), or requesting Tubby Toast from us. To let us know she is taking her invisible snacks seriously, she sometimes puts an imaginary cookie in her mouth, chews once or twice, then takes it out, says "no," and hands it to one of us --- just like she does with real food. We can't decide whether a half-chewed imaginary cookie is really gross or just imaginary gross. She has also taken to throwing imaginary Tubby Toast. Much though we want to discourage throwing food, we have decided that this is OK, and we make our best efforts to catch it and throw it back. In Paris, when Ellie was walking in the apartment, or the courtyard, or a sandbox, she would sometimes come to a sudden stop, straighten her shoulders, and say (looking at us with a slight grin) "Wait light change." After a beat or two, she would say "Cross da street, now" and continue on. She also liked to play this game while standing in the tub. Now that we are back in Columbus we don't cross nearly as many busy streets on foot, so "wait light change" has faded from Ellie's repertoire.
Another new development is negotiation. It is certainly
useful to be able to say "If you get in the stroller now,
we'll go to the playground in a few minutes," or "you can
have an ice cream cone after lunch," and have the offer
actually work. However, she does remember what we have
promised! She will also make her own counter-offers to
our requests:
Ellie: "Up!" (i.e., carry her).
Daddy: "No, you're getting heavy, time to go in the
stroller."
Ellie: "Shoulders!"
Compromise accepted.
It was a long trip home, Paris-London, London-Raleigh, Raleigh-Columbus, with Ellie sleeping a total of 2 hours during our 20 or so hours of travel. But she was delighted to see her room and her toys and to play in the back yard, and over the next few days she was very pleased to see her friends again. We were delighted to see our dryer. (And our friends.) Ellie found the transition back to day care a little tough, after six weeks of being with Mom and/or Dad virtually all the time, but she now seems to be settling back to her old routine.
I'll finish with a few characteristic Ellie-isms, in no particular order:
"Mama's pat da belly" -- Meaning, pat her belly as she goes to sleep in the crib. Unfortunately, this can take a very long time. The phrase is sometimes descriptive, but it is more often a request, quickly amplified to a demand if it is not honored. Obvious variant: "Daddy's pat da belly."
"Help YOU!" -- Despite our best efforts, we can't persuade Ellie that she should be saying "help ME," much less "help me, please." Sometimes this is just as well, e.g., when Ellie was straining to escape her stroller as Lisa pushed her along a busy Paris street, desperately calling "Help YOU!" to uncomprehending passers-by.
"Ellie's got da wake-ups" -- Ellie often plays around with words that sound alike, and she invented "wake-ups" on analogy with hiccups. Unfortunately, Ellie has the wake-ups far too often, always fighting sleep as fiercely as she can. Another example in this vein: "Hike-a-boo," apparently derived from the similarity of hiking boots and peek-a-boo, aided by a temporary confusion between "hike" and "hide."
"Wait'cha turn" -- An important phrase at the playground, but Ellie has also learned to apply it any time we are standing in a line.
"Ouch! ... Mama's bite da finger ... Daddy's bite da finger." --- Despite what it sounds like, this is not an accusation of child abuse. Ellie has a popup book with very clever constructions of many different kinds of animals: two tigers, four foxes, six snakes, etc. When we read this book, Ellie opens each flap, sticks her finger in the mouth of one of the creatures (even seemingly non-threatening species like fireflies), and says "Ouch!" "Mama's bite da finger" is an instruction to Mama to do the same thing. So there is still some work to be done on word order.
"Ellie's NEED a wahywhy!!" (Ellie needs the water) --- Screamed at maximum volume when I turned off the garden hose she was spraying (on herself, the grass, the plants, the fence, etc.) after her wading pool was full. Much though she likes the pool, she likes having control of the water supply even more. As this phrase illustrates, Ellie has learned that "need" is stronger than "want," so "I want it" has been largely replaced by "Ellie needs that."
"Ice cream cone" --- It's hard to believe that our daughter once didn't like ice cream. She had probably never had cold food or drinks at the orphanage, and the first few times she tried ice cream she screwed up her face in shock, unable to believe that her parents would play such a cruel trick on her. However, once she got over this initial phase, she quickly became a big fan, and this year in Paris we felt we were doing well if we kept her to one ice cream cone a day. Occasionally, when we all got cones, she would demand mama's as well (daddy is not so easily plied), and alternate licks with one ice cream cone clutched in each fist. She has developed a sharp eye for signs, booths, people walking by with cones, and any other indicators that ice cream is nearby. Thank goodness that international adoption has rescued Ellie from a life of deprivation.