My Daddy is Dr. Seuss!

Just a quick story - My mom has been here for about 10 days now waiting for Mr. Ford to arrive. She and Claire have been having a great time. Claire loves having a playmate and Mom is more than happy to oblige. My Mom, being the dedicated educator that she is, has apparently decided there is no time like the present to start preparing Claire for Kindergarten testing. This is where it gets interesting...
Apparently, one of the items on the test is the difference between an author and an illustrator so when my mom reads books to Claire she is sure to tell her who did what. Claire's favorite book right now is "10 Apples Up on Top" - we read it to her about 10 times a day! Mom was explaining to her that Dr. Seuss wrote it and would ask her "who wrote the Apples book?" and she would reply "Dr. Seuss!". Good job C - you are one step closer to kindergarten!

Fast forward - Claire asked "Where's Daddy?" and I gave her my usual response "Daddy is at work. He works at the hospital taking care of sick people" and Claire nodded her head saying "Daddy's a doctor" - "Yes, Daddy is a doctor" - I could see the wheels starting to spin in her little head. She looked up wide eyed and excited and said "Daddy is Dr. Seuss!". Well maybe we aren't quite ready for kindergarten!

Claire started doing something wonderful this week although we are a little perplexed by it. We have been working on counting recently and she has just about nailed 1-10 on most tries ("one" was holding us up for a long time!) so I thought I'd try to introduce Spanish numbers too. I started by saying "let's count in Spanish! Uno . . . " and Claire procedes to pick up "dos, tres, quatro, cinco, seis, siete, OCHO, NUEVE!" What the . . .? Who taught her how to count in Spanish? No she does not watch Dora. No they did not teach her in school. The only thing we can come up with is a CD that we listen to in the car (quite regularly) that counts in English and Spanish during one song. How amazing those little brains are at this age. They are just wired to learn everything around them. Rhett and I are excited about her learning Spanish since we will be in Peru for at least several months next year and perhaps longer depending on his research decisions. We would love to have another language so we are making that a priority for our kids although we will be a little jealous of them and perhaps frustrated when they plot against us in another tongue!

Oh, perhaps you are wondering about the baby. No he has not been born yet. I am still pregnant somehow! We are giving him every chance but we don't want to go past 41 weeks so we will probably intervene this week if he doesn't step up to the plate. I'm going for another pedicure today - I had tons of contractions when I had my pre-baby pedicure almost two weeks ago! The polish has chipped and there is still no baby but that is the most action I've had in my attempts to nudge this baby (and it feels quite nice!) so I'm going to treat myself again. Maybe he works on a deadline and will realize that his time is up now! It's time to join the rest of us. I can't wait to see what he looks like! Hopefully we will have news soon!