Snappy the Sailor Girl

So, since my last post was so sad...so so so sad...I thought I'd make it up to y'all by telling you this seriously hilarious story:

As you might know, Snappy has been in speech therapy for the past few months. It's been doing wonders for her vocabulary and grammar, but almost nothing for her pronunciation. (Which is why we're pretty darned sure that we're in for a second palate surgery...hence the sadness.) I told the speech therapist early on that I was afraid that when she did start talking, it'd be just a string of swear words, and he said, "yeah. That happens with these kids."

Makes sense, when you think about it. If your toddler isn't talking, then they don't repeat everything you say, if they don't repeat everything you say, you don't watch what you say because, even though you know you should, you don't get any negative reinforcement when you do swear (i.e. a little potty mouth running around the playground, shocking grannies). Parents are a lot like children. They too need positive and negative reinforcement.

And without it...well, let's just say that for a while now, I've suspected that Snappy has been saying F You! Now, I knew she'd been saying shit because she said it five times when I accidently dropped her Goldfish crackers into the cat's water dish. Hey, at least she used it correctly. But she was also, with quite the sneaky little gleam in her eye, saying something that sounded a lot like Uck OO. Hmm. What to do? I can't tell her not to swear if she's not swearing. So I had to tread lightly.

"Snappy, are you saying Achoo?"

"No," She said giggling. "Not achoo!"

"Are you saying Got you?"

That's when she squealed, "Uck you, La-ee!"

Ah ha. Oh yes. I know where she heard that. Many times. All over the city. From her mother, who thinks many ladies need to go uck themselves and has a hard time keeping her mouth shut when she encounters one. Oh boy.

I didn't know what to do then, but a few days later, at the grocery store, in the middle of a tantrum, I told Snappy she couldn't have some candy, and she screamed "Uck Oo! Uck Oo! Uck Oo!" It was strange. I found myself actually being glad that Snappy's 1st palate repair had left her with a palate too short to allow for proper pronunciation of plosives like p, b and good ol' F! Having the tantrumy child in the grocery store is one thing, having a filthy mouthed tantrum thrower is yet another. I hugged her, kissed the top of her head and said, "Oh Snappy, that's really naughty. You can't do that." She stopped.

I guess my days of swearing at ladies are over. Oh well. It was fun while it lasted. Damn b words had it coming.

Baby gets the Blues

Yesterday, Snappy dug out Sneakers, the Seaside Cat and said, "I want to read kitty cat story." The kitty cat story? But Snappy, that story makes you cry. She just lowered her little eyebrows and said "I want the kitty cat story." A "serious business" face she reserves for asking for ice cream cones...and only for asking for asking for ice cream cones. Hm.

Well, maybe she's matured. After all, the kitty cat story made her cry when she was one and a half. She's nearly two and a half now. She plays intricate imagination games with her dolls and animals, she makes up wild stories about the owl, puma and Moll Moll, she sings Twinkle Twinkle Little star on the potty, she sits on a potty, she talks in full sentences, she answers questions in full sentences, she makes demands in full sentences, she swears! and she has trouble deciding whether to be a witch or a pirate for Halloween...such a grown-up problem. Such a big girl! Surely, she no longer cries when the kitty gets his paw pinched by the crab. Surely she's past that.

Apparently, she is not (and don't call her surely).

I don't pretend to be a child development expert, but I've noticed that at around 18 months or so, babies get the blues. Not all of them, but I've seen other kids her age cry at sad songs (why do baby music teachers ever even go near the key of D minor? Have they learned nothing from Spinal Tap?!). As slap happy and snappy go lucky as she most often was, Snappy was also a bit of a blues master herself. She cried at the sad songs in music class. She also cried when the rocket ship went up up up up and then down down down down in Yo Gabba Gabba, when the V Tarzan-yelled through the Bronx Zoo on Sesame Street, when Swiper got his swiping butt stuck in a bottle on Dora and of course, when a hapless black cat got his paw pinched by a vicious crab in one of her, otherwise, favorite books. And OH the pathos! Capital O capital H the PATHOS! Her mournful sobs once sent an entire playground of 3 year-olds into a chorus of sympathy crying after a big kid refused to let her stomp on his sand castle.

Actually, it was the playground incident that started me thinking. It was the way the whole 46th Avenue playground just stopped. The kids stopped to watch this little 1 1/2 year old cry, the older ones, choking back tears themselves, the younger ones crying right along with her. The parents stopped and watched their own kids. They seemed surprised by the stunning show of empathy. And probably these kids were more sensitive than your average sand sifter, but there was something about that moment...that seemed different...sadder than it should've been. Toddlers got their feeling hurt on that playground everyday. Why did Snappy seem to have a DEE-Vine right to the blues?

She certainly has a gift for it, even more so now that she can talk. Pairing her already heart-string-pulling sobs with lines like "he scared me!" when the cat hisses at her, "I'm sorry." when she thinks someone is mad at her and, the all time soul-smacking tear-tugging "I want to go home!." She waits to bust that little gem out for emergency situations: like clinic visits, doctor's appointments and banks without lolly-pops. "I want to go home". Such a great line! Classic to the human condition, completely knocked-up with emotion, as a song lyric, it rivals "Son, pack your things, I've come to take you home" and makes "I'm serious as cancer when I say rythmn is a dancer" look like a bucket of shit (hm...that's not really hard to do, is it?).

Oh, and now she changes it up and says things like, "He wants to go home". Like when Ruby and Louise are working on their first-aid badge for bunny scouts, and they wrap Max in bandages. Snappy points at him and says, "he wants to go home." I put two and two together. Max looked like he was at the doctor. Snappy thought the doctors office was a torture chamber and behaved as such when placed inside it. Snappy needed to go to the doctors office from time to time. Here, I thought was a perfect opportunity to discuss her feelings and apprehension about people who wear stethoscopes.

"Do you think Max is scared?" I asked, in my best mommy voice. Snappy thought about it and opened her mouth to speak, but what came out was the beginnings of a wail that was sure to be sadder than Sophie's Choice (a movie with a premise so sad, I refuse to watch it), The Things They Carried and every Disney movie ever made...had I not shut it down with a quick, " I meant, do you want a Popsicle? That's what I meant..Max is fine. Everything is fine. Lime or orange? Why not both?"

But yesterday, when she pointed to a picture of Sneakers in the back seat of a car and, on the verge of woeful wailing, said, "he wants to go home," I started to think that maybe, in this case, two and two make five. Snappy is two, she's not an idiot. She knows that cat doesn't want to go to the beach, any more than Max wants to play doctor with his sister and her crazy bunny friend or Swiper wants to get stuffed in a bottle. She knows that some asshole shoved that fox in that bottle...possibly the same one who decided it would be a good idea to take a cat to the ocean. And it makes her cry because she's been down that lonely road. And if she's smart enough to figure that out, she's smart enough to know that something is up when she hears mom and the speech therapist saying things like "second palate surgery" and "recovery time".

And if she is that smart, then she knows that if it were up to me, she'd never have the blues again. She'd have the grouchies, the angries, the tantrums and the just plain sads, but never the blues. But it's not. And she will.

Peek-a-boo!

Quickie post!

Look how cute Snappy is getting! Look at her. Just look at her. Cute, huh? I did that. (thanks to Nikki for the professional-looking headshots)

Snappy Ruled the Pool...

So, we're home now, and we're all glad to be home (Snappy yelled "home" from the moment we started packing up the hotel room to the time she ran in the door, ready to greet the poor fat cat with a barrage of squeals and tickles.) In the Top Ten List of cool shit that we did, Meeting Giant Clams at the aquarium (Snappy is well-schooled in Spongebob Marine Biology and said, "Clam" when she saw them), Coming face to face with a tiger at the Zoo and our Pretty Woman-esque, Paris Hilton-style shopping spree at the ABC Stores would be at the top, Daddy Monster losing his wedding ring in the Pacific would be at the bottom, but the spot at #1 would, for all of us, surely be Snappy learns to swim.

Our first day there, we arrived to find that our room wasn't ready. We were disappointed. We left our stuff with the bell hops...and wandered around..until we wandered outside...and there it was...in the middle of this strange tourist trap...Waikiki Beach. I heard Polynesian rhythms in my head as I watched a group of people row a native-style canoe in the pale blue surf. So this was it. This was Hawaii...not a secluded waterfall in the middle of a rain forest, but one of the most beautiful beaches I've ever seen set straight across a busy city street.

Because the good people who designed the beach were smart enough to put in a wave wall,so that kids could swim without having to fear for their lives (ahem! Ocean Beach!) We were able to take Snappy down to the water, only to discover that Snappy had developed (along with her new stranger anxiety) a fear of water and wanted nothing to do with it and ran around the beach, knowing full well that we would chase after her. Oh yeah...did I tell you it was a record -breaking heat wave? Yeah, people from Hawaii were complaining about the heat. We were accustomed to life in a fog bank...the last thing we wanted to do was chase a two-year old in the mid-morning sun around the beach.

So, I took her to the pool. Still the blazing sun, still the searing heat, but it had something the ocean did not: steps! I sat her down on the first step and told her to splash in the water. She did this for awhile and then I suggested she try the next step. She did it! I decided to push my luck and try for the next step. At first, she seemed game, but then she balked...and bolted. I caught her just before she went sprinting across the slick tile. I started over again. Slower this time.


The whole process repeated itself a few times before I remembered that Snappy's speech therapist said we should make motor boat noises for her. "Snappy, would you like a motor boat ride?" She shook her head. No she did not. I grabbed her by the waist and spun her in the water Bbbbbbbbrrrbbbrrrbbbbb! Snappy's expression turned from fear to anger to surprise to joy!

"Swim! Swim!" She said.

"That's right! Snappy's swimming. Just like the ducks!" We ventured out into the pool.

"Swim! Swim!" Snappy said at the 5 foot mark, pushing at my arms. It was then that I realized that by "swim swim" she meant "Yes, mom, I've got this swimming thing down. You can let go now. Come on. Let go! Oh for Chrissakes mom, you've got to cut the apron strings sometime."

Much to Snappy's mild annoyment, I did not let go, but I did take our little Swim Swim show on the road. Technically...across the road. To Waikiki beach, where we spent many sunscreen-covered hours splashing and saying stuff like "swim! swim!" and "Bbbbbbbbrrrbbbrrrbbbbb!" Oh...and losing wedding rings, but that's no where near as important as the swimming.

Snappy's New Religion

During a fun visit to the Honolulu Zoo today, Snappy found her new god: this elephant statue:

Snappy goes Native

I know I owe many blogs about how cute Snappy is, and believe me, those are coming, but I'm going to Blog about our big trip to Hawaii for the next couple days. The first installment I like to call "Getting There" or "The Horror. The Horror.".





We started Wednesday am like gangbusters. We woke up Snappy at 6:30 am. It was about 4 hours too early to be getting up by her clock, but we told her we were going to get on a plane and she sprung into action: ready for adventure.

watching Ratatouille with Dad.

And all was great. We flew Hawaiian Airlines, which precludes the big in-flight entertainment feature presentation (Drillbit Taylor) with lovely, bucolic scenes of Hawaii. Snappy enjoyed this, saying things like "hey fish" and "eat grass" (that last comment came when she saw a horse eating grass...genius!).



A few hours later, it came to pass that I, who had delegated walking-the-high-energy-toddler-up-and-down-the-aisle duty to Dad for the entire flight (there and back, but sh. He doesn't know that, yet.), got the first poopy diaper duty. I changed it in the tiny ass bathroom like the seasoned pro I am. I of course had an extra pair of much-needed pajama bottoms (stupid leaky safeway brand diapers) and plenty of extra wipes to clean up her car seat (while holding a two-year old under my arm like a clutch purse, of course). I resisted the urge to run up and down the aisle, pumping my fist and singing Queen's We are the Champions (with the lyric we are changed to I am.



After a bit of a rough patch (aka full-blown tantrum). I pulled yet another miracle out of my pocket (aka a Big Big World DVD). "Ook!" Snappy exclaimed, And just like that...tantrum over. The miracles continued as Snappy fell asleep just as the words "dangerously low battery" flashed across the screen. Ha! I laugh at danger.

She looks cute, but she's stinking up the entire plane.

Or I did. That is until two agonizing hours before the flight ended, I realized that my sleeping beauty was, yet again, sitting in a puddle of what, for potty-training purposes, we'll call pee-pee. There was also obviously (and not just to me) some poopy. I wasn't going to wake her...oh no...I'd sooner pull on Superman's cape while simultaneously spitting into the wind, pulling the Lone Ranger's mask off and messing around with Jim than to wake a sleeping toddler on an airplane.



When the plane touched down, like a couple of secret ops on a kill-or-be-killed mission, Dad and I managed to get her out of her car seat and into the broom-closet-sized bathroom before the remove-your-seatbelts ding had fully dinged. I still had plenty of wipes, but no more bottoms, so I threw a pajama top on her legs and hoped no one would notice...and possibly inform the autorities.

Don't let the early-80's-mobster-style limo she's rolling in fool you...she's not REALLY wearing pants.

Enough blogging...I'm in Hawaii, dammit!



Next...Snappy rules the pool.