Ivie's Random Thoughts (#7)

Jelly

We've been reading "Twas the Night Before Christmas" with Ivie before bed for several nights now, so she's familiarized herself with several of the lines. Sunday morning, as she was eating her breakfast (peaches and a pop-tart), I told her that she needed to drink ALL of her milk before she could get up and play with her cousins. She had several drinks, but was not yet finished, when she looked up at me, stressed, and said, "Mommy, I'm full! This milk is making my belly full of jelly!".

Referencing, of course, St. Nick's belly, "that shook when he laughed like a bowl full of jelly."


Manners

We've been working with Ivie on the polite way of asking permission to leave the table after a meal. The most difficult word of the phrase for her at first was "excused" - it took her a week or so to get that one down. But now she's having a hard time grasping the meaning of "may", since she's much more familiar with the word "can". So her current version of the request is this:

"May can I be excused?"


Spelling

One day at the beach, as I was preparing to put Macie down for a nap, I was searching for her pacifier (because I'm still not in paci-mode and had only remembered to bring one). After looking around to no avail, I asked everyone sitting in the living room, "Have any of you seen Macie's p-a-c-i" (spelling it out so that she wouldn't hear me say "the word" and start sticking her tongue out in anticipation).

No one said a word, but everyone started looking around on the floor, the tables, the couch... Ivie, who was playing off to the side, looked up nonchalantly and said, "Macie's paci? You're looking for Macie's paci?"

Everyone just looked around at each other with bewildered looks, and I thought to myself, "If she can spell already, I'm in big trouble!" To test it out, I asked her how to spell paci. Her response?

"P-C-Y-L"

So she must just be really good at using contextual clues.

But this HAS gotten her in a spelling mood. Tonight, as we drove through Chick-fil-A for some ice cream (yes, they sell ice dream cones when it's 37 degrees outside), Ivie asked how to spell various animal words, including "mouse". So I spelled it for her, and then randomly started singing the "M-I-C... K-E-Y... M-O-U-S-E" song. I sang it a few times, and then told Ivie that if she could sing it, she would be able to spell mouse, too.

After we practiced a few times together, I asked her if she could spell "mouse" by herself. Here's what she said:

"M-O-U-deceive"

Fitting choice of words for her to use following the Christmas season and the many stories about Santa Claus.