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Siena’s mutant chicken

Mama roasted a chicken for dinner on Sunday (very tasty, btw). As we have of late, we gave the drumsticks to Siena. If we had not force the squash upon her, her dinner would’ve consisted of chicken and milk.

After she devoured her second drumstick, Siena said, “I want another drumstick please.” Mama was upstairs tending to Thalia at this point, so if was left to me.

Daddy: Siena, how many legs do you have?

Siena: One, two.

Daddy: And how many hind legs does Tenzing have?

Siena (looking around for Tenzing): One, two!

Daddy: How many hind legs does Nalia have?

Siena: Two

Daddy: How many legs does a chicken have?

Siena: Two!

Daddy: Well, drumsticks are chicken legs, and you ate two of them already, which means there are no more drumsticks.

Siena: No they’re not.

Daddy: Yes they are.

Siena: No they’re not. (this could go on a while…)

Daddy: Actually, they are. And you ate both, so there are no more.

Siena (moving one of the drumsticks from her plate into her salad bowl): Now’s there one!

Daddy: You still ate two.

Siena (moving the other): Now there’s none!

Daddy: Siena, there are no more drumsticks. Chickens have two legs, and you got the two drumsticks.

At this point, Siena got upset and petulantly said, “I’m going to go tell Mama that you said there were no more drumsticks.” I responded as she tromped up the stairs, “You do that, Siena.”

I then hear this exchange from upstairs:

Siena: Mama! Daddy said there were no more drumsticks!

Mama: Well, chickens only have two legs.

I shout up after them, “That’s what I said!”

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By John – March 8, 2010

Siena’s astoundingly action-packed day

Compared to a normal winter Saturday (play inside and maybe go to Target at some point), Siena’s day today was positively overflowing with activity.

Today, Siena:

  • Woke up at 5:30 and went in to bug Nonna, who is visiting for the weekend because Pops is on a golf junket.
  • Had french toast for breakfast while Mama and I slept in just a little (making up for Thalia having been up 11 PM to midnight last night).
  • Got her hair cut, including getting it with sparkles and braided, and then getting a red lollipop.
  • Went grocery shopping with Nonna and Mama.
  • Rode around the driveway on her trike.
  • Went for a walk with Mama, Nonna, Thalia, and Nalia.
  • Had a huge lunch including mac n cheese, blueberries, strawberries, strawberry yogurt, and other stuff I don’t remember.
  • Helped pick up sticks in the yard for the bonfire we had today to burn forest debris and dead branches.
  • Roasted some marshmallows with me in said bonfire (which was so hot that the ‘mallows would basically incinerate in a matter of seconds).
  • Had a snack with Thalia, Mama, and Nonna on our front steps while I tossed our Christmas tree on the fire, creating the biggest leaping flames of the day. (Nonna would like to point out that leaping hardly describes this; the flames were around 12 feet up into the air.)
  • Played catch with me and a soccer ball while we waited for the fire to die down. Siena was surprisingly good at both catching and throwing.
  • Sprayed the dying embers and ashes with the hose. She also sprayed a few trees, a bunch of leaves, her soccer ball, the grass, and some moving objects (namely, Nonna and me running out of the way while we tried to take some pictures).
  • Read some books while we all rested afterward.
  • Ate out at a Ruby Tuesday (sadly, the place we wanted to go to, Canyon Cafe, where we’ve been to celebrate a few important occasions in the past like Mama’s graduation from vet school was out of business).
  • Came home and had ice cream for dessert.
  • Took a bath, and
  • Went to bed.

Mama described Siena’s water spraying as being very Tom Sawyer-esque. I explained to her how fun it was to spray the water, and she bought right into it! Of course, it is a lot more fun than painting an old fence. It was a toss-up whether her skill with throwing and catching or her excellent water work made me more proud of her today. She was a real champ.

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By John – March 6, 2010

Our budding feminist

Siena took a little plastic red ball into bath with her tonight. She called it a water ball, then pretended it was a binky or a lollipop or some such. As such got out of the tub and I was drying her off, she held it up to her face and called it her nose. So I started singing Siena the Red-Nosed Baby:

Siena, the red-nosed baby,
Had a very shiny nose.
And if you ever saw it,
you would even say it glows.

At this point Siena stops me, and says, “no it’s her.” Now, this is perfectly normal for her to do when correcting me when I’m talking about one of her stuffed animals that I thought was a boy but she has decided for that day is a girl. In this case, I hadn’t said “him,” so I wasn’t sure what she meant by the correction in this song, but after looking up the lyrics later on I realized that it is “if you ever saw him,” which is how Siena knows it and what she thought I said. So points for her.

I started over, changing the two instances of “him” I do know of to a “her” (which I would have done anyway). I wasn’t prepared for what she would do next!

Siena, the red-nosed baby,
Had a very shiny nose.
And if you ever saw it,
you would even say it glows.

All of the other babies
used to laugh and call her names.
They’d never let poor Siena
join in any baby games.

Then one foggy Christmas Eve,
Daddy came to say [she corrects me to Santa]:
Siena with your nose so bright,
Won’t you guide my van tonight?

Then all the babies loved her
as they shouted out with glee,
Siena the red-nosed baby,
you’ll go down in history!

And then Siena says,

No it’s herstory!

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By John – March 4, 2010

Aliens eating the house

Mama reports that Siena went running around the house this morning shouting a story about how aliens were coming and were going to eat everything in the house and the house itself. “Oh no! They’re going to eat this!”

She’s also been telling many other stories of late, and they have been more coherent and cohesive than the shorter stories she was making up half a year ago. It’s good to see her imagination running so wild.

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By John – March 2, 2010

An article about us in the New York Times?

Close enough…

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/magazine/28FOB-medium-t.html?ref=magazine&pagewanted=print

Only partially related, I’m reminded of a story from Uncle Marcus. After his daughter was a few years old, for some reason he was using a film camera to take pictures of her (using up an unfinished roll from an old camera, I suspect). After a few pictures, she was really confused why she couldn’t review the pictures on the camera immediately.

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By John – March 1, 2010

Odds and Winds

The storm last night knocked out power for two hours. Not a real tragedy except it was from 9:30 to 11:30, so we missed the bulk of the women’s figure skating free skate. The wind was incredibly strong, knocking the house around quite a bit. I was surprised this morning to see certain trees still standing, but that perhaps is a testament to the strength of the ice storm we had in 2008 that knocked down many trees.

And now for the odds, namely Siena. Sometimes we just wonder what goes on in that little mind.

Siena has a subscription to Your Big Backyard magazine, and one issue has a picture game that shows a bunch of animals in a zoo, but all their ears have been swapped around, and the child has to point out which ears go where.

So this morning, Siena says while looking at the page, “Someday I want to go to a zoo and remove all the ears and put them on different animals, but it’s going to be very hard work.” (The italics represent where she emphasized each word in a staccato manner.)

I pointed out that not only would it be hard work, it would also be pathological and probably criminal.

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By John – February 26, 2010

Siena’s Grand Theory of Time

It is axiomatic that as a three-year old, Siena’s perception of time and measure of time intervals will be different from ours (around 12 times her age at present). Two hours for her is as much of her life as a day for us. I suspect this is why I look back on my summers in middle and high school as comprising endless, lazy days. It was either that or due to never having any jobs and being a general layabout.

There’s another aspect of time perception that a coworker with a slightly older daughter told me about that we have now seen in full bloom in Siena, and that is the perception of the relationship in time between two events as having direction but without magnitude. By that I mean, Siena distinguishes between things that happened in the past versus things happening now or things that will or are expected to happen in the future, but almost universally things in the past are all equally in the past. Something that happened yesterday is as much in the past as something that happened last week or last year. At times, there is evident confusion about exactly when events occurred.

This manifests in Siena’s language through her uniform use of the words yesterday, today, and tomorrow. If something was in the past, it was yesterday. To her, yesterday means it happened. Tomorrow means it will happen.

Here are some examples of what she’ll say:

  • Yesterday when we went to visit Izzie… (actually Siena that was three weeks ago)
  • Do you remember yesterday when we we were at home and Mama was at work… (that was last Saturday)
  • We went to the aquarium yesterday (almost a year ago)
  • Tomorrow is a school day (yes, technically tomorrow is)
  • Are we going to see Mo tomorrow (in the future, yes, but not tomorrow)

Trying to answer questions about whether something happened yesterday or not always results in a dual answer: yes it did happen, but that wasn’t yesterday. Sometimes she gets upset, “but it was yesterday!”

There’s something precious about this understanding of time. Like today and tomorrow, it too is fleeting, and within a year she should have a better understanding of the relative closeness of events to the present. Goodness knows we’ve been working on it long enough. Since yesterday, in fact!

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By John – February 24, 2010

Being Goofy

It’s been a busy few days, and it’s especially hard to find the time and energy to write on the weekends, so to not fall behind too much, here is another picture of the girls horsing around in our living room:

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By John – February 23, 2010

Siena’s First Skate

A big day for Siena today! After watching some of the men’s figure skating from Tuesday night (seriously taped delayed to Saturday), she wanted to go out skating for herself. So here she is!

Getting ready:

Out on the ice:

And coming back in:

And here’s a video of her out there for the first time!

Siena was a little hard on herself afterwards, implying that she didn’t have a great time because she fell down. We explained that you have to fall down many times to learn how to do it right, and she did better than daddy would’ve done. Is this kind of perfectionism a harbinger of her attitude in the future? That would be a double-edge sword, certainly. Finally, for the record, I avoided any obvious Batman Begins quotes.

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By John – February 21, 2010

Random videos of the day

No pictures or videos recently, so here are two videos of the kids from the past few days.

First, a more recent version of Thalia rolling over. She’s so cheerful!

Next, a medical documentary of Siena caring for her sick dolls:

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By John – February 19, 2010