Secret Agent Josephine

There was a pretty sunset tonight but I was too busy to go any further than our patio to take a picture of it. Toby grabbed his camera and jumped out of here like a bat out of hell. I hope he got his shot. Baby Bug was crying and crying, wanting to go with him or see what all the excitement was about or something. She loves her Daddy. So I carried her out to the patio and tried to explain the pretty colors and the clouds… I think she got it.

She’s really into colors and letters and numbers. I know that’s advanced but sometimes it sort of freaks me out. Is it normal for a kid to sing the alphabet (or her version of it that goes something like “A B D D F Q T W…Z Me”) all day long at 18 months? I think the tune is stuck in her head. She seems to have inherited that from her Dad. Toby hates it when he gets a song stuck in his head. He on purpose won’t listen to catchy tunes because they drive him batty.

Speaking of tunes driving you batty. Baby Bug likes to sing the “Waffle Time” song over and over. Silly me. I started that. In the morning, as I took her frozen waffles out of the freezer, I would do a little can can dance and sing “Waffle Time! Waffle Time! La la la la…something something something” to the tune of “This Old Man, He played sticks…Nick Knack Paddy Whack…” Well, back then it was cute and fun and she’d smile at me because I’m so goofy. I had no idea that every note was sticking in her giant sponge brain like SUPER GLUE!

Now everything is the “Waffle Time” song. Except she changes it to fit her needs. We hear “Cookie Time! Cookie Time!” a lot as well as “Daddy Time” and “Teeth Time” (for brushing her teeth). I suppose it comes in handy when I need her to do something like “Nap Time! Nap Time!” but it is kind of disconcerting that a little tune from way back a few months ago is now our daily mantra. I think I’ll be more careful when I make up songs from now on.

My next question is, is it normal for a child to like one color only and only ever color with that ONE color? Baby Bug is obsessed with the color green. She wants to color all day long but she will only choose the green crayon. First, she finds the orange or the brown crayon and hands them to me. I am the designated orange and brown color-er. Then she finds the green crayon and saves it for herself. I am not allowed to color with the green crayon. It is HER’S and she’s very adamant about it.

Sometimes I hide the green crayon, just to see what she will do. She’ll look for it and look for it and then start whining and complaining. I wonder if it is my fault. She’s such a creature of routine. I wonder if I always grabbed the brown or the orange crayon (because you know, I’m always drawing dogs and dogs are brown or orange, of course) and somehow that cemented into her memory that this is how we do it.

She’s so funny in these things. Remember how she used to find matching things? If she was playing with blocks, she would hold the two blue blocks. If she was playing with her bathtime foam numbers, she’d find the two nines and then get frustrated because one was yellow and the other was green. So she’d match up the green one with the green seven because the other seven was orange. Poor girl. Why can’t they make everything matching?

We seem to have moved past the matching stage. Now she just likes to count and name letters. She doesn’t get them right yet but I have a feeling that’s just around the corner if I help her. I’m not too worried about her having some kind of developmental disorder because she seems so bright and happy but it is kind of weird.

Every where we go she’s naming off letters and numbers. Kind of like Rainman except she’s not tilting her head to one side and looking strangely disconnected from the rest of the world. Today, as we walked through a parking lot to get to the park, she called out letters from the car’s license plate and street signs. Is this normal?

If it’s not, that’s okay. I love her to pieces anyway.