"Aletheia Boat?"

Aletheia keeps asking to watch the video of her first boat ride. When we're at the computer, she'll walk up and say "Aletheia boat? Aletheia boat?" On Saturday we were watching it again and she started asking "Go boats? Go boats?" So we went back. Maybe I'm an indulgent dad, but we only get 52 Saturdays every year. If there's nothing particularly going on and the kid wants to go boats, then we will go boats. It more fun than anything I had in mind.

Captain Aletheia

26 Months, 10 Days

Tragic TV Moments

So, here's the thing. Since Aletheia turned two, we've been letting her watch a little TV--about an hour a day. As far as she knows, there are only three programs in the world: Sesame Street, her Laurie Berkner Band DVD, and Super Why. 

Now, some of you might not be familiar with Super Why. It's a show aimed at the preschool set that teaches kids how to read using a variety of techniques. The main characters all live in "Storybook Village" which is populated with characters from classic children's stories. The big four are Little Red Riding Hood, Pig (one of the Three Little, I think), Princess Pea, and the ringleader, Whyatt (the only non-story character). The episodes are incredibly formulaic, like Law and Order for the pull-ups crowd. Whyatt gets a picture message on his iPhone, finds out one of the gang has some kind of dilemma, and calls them all to the clubhouse where they fly into a book with a related situation to learn from the characters. "I lied to my mom and I don't know what to do--let's go talk to Pinocchio!" (Yeah, there's a whopping big inconsistency in the whole show. In theory, they already live with all the storybook characters, so they should be able to walk down the block, but inside they pull a book off the shelf and fly into some weird 2-D book environment.)

In order to enter the story, they turn into the "Super Readers" complete with costume and name change. They become "Wonder Red, with Word Power!"; "Alpha Pig, with Alphabet Power!"; "Princess Presto with Spelling Power" and "Super Why, with the Power to Read!" And, of course, there is "Super You with the Power to Help!"

Here's the gang, in their Super Readers pose:

Aletheia loves this show.  Loves it, loves it, loves it.  Like capital L-O-V-E with smooches and hugs.  And she has a mad, deep, toddler crush on Whyatt.  Probably five days out of seven we hear the "Super Why" chant from her.  "SuperWhySuperWhySuperWhySuperWhy Pleeeeeeeease?"  But what's weird is her love for Whyatt does not spread to the other characters.  She is, at best, indifferent to Princess Presto and Alpha Pig.  She'll watch when they are on, but you can tell she's just waiting for her beloved Super Why to get back on the screen.  And then there is Wonder Red.  Aletheia hates her.  Take her crazy love for Whyatt, multiply it by five and throw a minus sign on it, and that's how she feels about Red.  When there's a Wonder Red segment going, Allie bursts into tears and refuses to watch.  The chant starts again.  "SuperWhySuperWhySuperWhyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!"  She almost acts scared, like Red took a machete to her teddy bear.  It is seriously intense.  I've tried to help her get over it.  "Hey, that's Wonder Red!  She's really nice.  That's Super Why's best friend!"  But it gets nowhere.  If I didn't know any better, I'd think she was jealous.

We've seen something similar with Sesame Street, where Aletheia is a huge Elmo fanatic and obviously perks up when he is on, but there's no real particular dislike of another muppet, just a special love for the little red guy.  This thing with Wonder Red is just weird.  It's a good thing that she's just a cartoon, because otherwise I think a restraining order would be called for.  I wouldn't trust Aletheia not to hire a hit man.  It's that bad.

Toddler brains.  They are funny things.

Got to go.  Wonder Red is on again, and I need to fast forward.

Update:  Here she is, the object of my daughter's passionate rage.

Hat and Necklace

We are very seldom without a hat these days.

26 Months, 15 Days

Enjoying the Final Product

Okay, not the best possible picture of mommy, but making cookies is hard work!

26 Months, 3 Days

Video: Boat Ride

This is what we did today.

Adding Sprinkles

Cutting Out Cookies

26 Months, 3 Days

Getting Ready to Bake Cookies

26 Months, 3 Days

Going Up

Disaster! We finally made time to take Aletheia to the North Carolina Zoo, and when we got there, we realized that the camera was at home. So just imagine all the wonderful pictures we would have had. Guess we have incentive to go again soon.

The kid is getting more and more verbal all the time. Sentences are just tumbling out--and she's funny. Whenever we saw a big animal--an elephant or a bison, or a rhino--Aletheia would call out "It'll eat you!" She didn't seemed worried about it or scared--she just wanted to let us know. So we carefully pointed out that the elephants and bison were obviously eating grass. Every time we saw any animal graze, we showed her again. "Look, it's eating grass!"

Until we got to the lions, when I said. "Do you see them? They will eat you."

She just nodded and said "yeah"--like she knew it all along. Something in here was bound to eat kids.

One of the elephants came right up to the fence, so she was only about four or five feet away from it. (It was the one they call Artie.) Artie made the biggest impression of anything that day. Just ask her what she saw at the zoo, and she'll smile and say "Elephant!" (And then, because we drilled it in, she'll usually add "It eats grass.")

In other news, she's going through a big hat phase. Can't go anywhere without a hat. When I got her out of bed yesterday, she had already put one on. She's quite the fashionplate.

And her new big sentence is "I love it!" I have no idea where this one started, but she loves everything in the universe, apparently.

"Want to watch Sesame Street?"
"I love it!"

"Here's your blanket."
"I love it!"

"Let's read a storybook."
"I love it!"

"You need to eat some broccoli now."
"I love it!"

This happy-go-lucky, exceedingly grateful attitude toward life is not something, I should add, that she inherited from me.

She also made me and her mommy laugh really hard tonight. She was desperately trying to avoid going to bed, and was pulling out all the stops. She was pointing to everything in the room and calling out what it was. "Yellow blanket!" "Green pillow!" "Red shirt!" She was making silly faces and hiding under the blankets. She told us both that she loved us. She jumped around and laughed and nuzzled noses with us. And in the middle of all this activity she sits up and yells "I'm silly!"

I can't remember exactly what had come before, but it was one of those perfectly timed moments that made us both laugh out loud--which made her laugh really hard, and she said it again, "I'm silly!"

I love it.