Ant Eater

 My baby is a genius ...... that eats ants.

"More ants..."

 The first line of a blog post is sort of like the first paragraph of a book; it's important! I also understand that people don't generally like to read blogs about other people's children. I totally get it. Other people's children are just that; other. people's. children. Nobody cares that your toddler can almost sit responsibly with a 'real' book and not eat the pages. Nobody cares that she dances to techno music and is a terrible, terrible dancer. It's only interesting to me because she's my kid.

 Now that all of the baby hating, children loathing a-holes are gone, I can share some little stories of Alina with the ones that care just a titch.

 My baby has certainly morphed into a curious, constantly changing toddler. It's crazy! She doesn't say a ton of words on her own. We prompt her to say words and if she's up for it, she'll give it a try. Her vocabulary consists of dad, baba, ta ta, kitty, Jody, key, shoes, hi, bu-bye, mom and num num and some words that sound sort of like "all done." She can say other words but she doesn't without the usual prompting. Jody is the lady that watches her on a regular basis now and she taught her sign language from an early age. The one sign that she continually uses is 'more' because my child is a little pig.

 Rob's folks are in town for the next couple of weeks and they adore little Alina to the moon and back and then back to the moon and then back again. No joke, she is the sparkle in their eyes. It's really nice to see. Jody is on a little vacation so Rob's parents are watching her while we're at work. Nonna, Alina's grandma was off somewhere and Alina and her Papa were together upstairs. Well Papa sensed a little stinky odour coming from his one and only grand child and he started calling for his wife. Papa isn't a big fan of cleaning poopy diapers. Alina disappeared for a minute and returned with two clean diapers that she handed to him. Then she led him into her bedroom, to her change table. When I hear about her doing things like that I am continually amazed at how smart she is! I don't mean, just her. I mean kids that age in general. They are so receptive and they know a lot more than we think they do. Just because she can't say the words does not mean she can't understand them. She knows who we all are. She knows what toys are what. My one cheat is that I do let her watch Sesame Street and often. So she knows the characters because she sees them on the t.v. But I didn't realize she knew them individually and by their names. She has three Sesame Street characters; Abby, Ernie and Elmo. Well, the other morning she came out with Abby. I told her that she forgot the other guys and she hurried into her play room and proudly presented Ernie and Elmo to me. I was impressed.

 About a month ago, Jody was in bed with her husband and they were looking for their t.v. remote. It was nowhere to be found and then Jody thought; Alina! So the following day she asked Alina if she knew where the t.v. remotes were. Alina perked up from her playing and waddled to the play room and under a pile of purses she pulled out all the remotes she had stashed away. I mean first that is pretty funny. But then I am impressed that she understood and remembered where she put them the day before.

 I guess this post is all about me bragging about how great my kid is. How obnoxious. But to balance it all out; she did eat an ant the other night. We were all visiting on the back deck and she discovered an ant for the first time. So she was chasing it around the deck and finally she bent down, picked it up and popped it in her mouth. Mmmm - ants. My kid is a genius, but she does eat ants.