The sound of music...

Kids say the funniest things - especially Lana. Ok, I admit that I don't spend a great deal of time with many other kids, but I'd imagine that what Lana says is pretty funny by most standards. It gives me some insight into the wonderful and creative way in which her mind works.

I am hereby proud to present to you Lana's interpretation and arrangement of "Do Re Mi" from The Sound of Music - I hope you enjoy it.

Bernard: Do, a deer a female deer...
Lana: ...like Play-Doh?

Bernard: Re, a drop of golden sun...
Lana: ...like this? (makes the shape of a ball with her hands) Like a rainbow?

Bernard: Mi, a name I call myself...
Lana: ...like Lana? (pats her chest with her palm)

Bernard: Fa, a long long way to run...
Lana: ...like this? (runs away to the foot of her bed)

Bernard: So, a needle pulling thread...
Lana: ...like this? (pulls on the front of her shirt)

Bernard: La, a note to follow so...
Lana: ...like this? (walks around) Is this follow?

Bernard: Ti, a drink with jam and bread...
Lana: ...like eating bread and peanut?

Bernard: ...that will bring us back to...
Lana: ...Play-Doh!

Now that's music to my ears. =)

But I Practiced!!

Lately, Lana has been loving Lilo and Stitch. We have the movie on our iPod touch and we give it to her for entertainment when she wakes up too early or when she's getting cranky at a restaurant, etc. She's been watching it over and over lately (except for the first 10 minutes which she always wants us to skip). She always tells us "I want to watch Lilo dance!" 

In one of the first scenes of the movie, Lilo goes to her dance class all wet from swimming in the ocean and makes a big puddle in which the other little girls slip and fall. Because of this, much to her distress, Lilo gets kicked out of the dance class. She exclaims to her dance teacher as she is getting in trouble, "I just want to dance! I practiced!"

Lana has seen this and interpreted it through her two year old understanding. I think she thinks "I practiced!" means something like "But I really really want to!!" because now she comes out with things like:

"I want to draw! I practiced!"

"I want to go to the park! I practiced!!"

"I want to eat chocolate! I practiced!!!!!"

Miss Independent

The other day, Lana was putting on her shoes.

Although there are some shoes that Lana can manage by herself, it is common knowledge around here that she can't quite manage this particular buckle yet.

Bernard saw her struggling with them so he went over to help, only to be greeted with:

"No Daddy, No Daddy!! Don't help me! Don't help me!! Don't even TOUCH my shoe!!"

I know the day is coming, not too far away most likely, when that will be followed by "Don't even THINK about touching my shoe... don't even THINK about thinking about it" and so on. 

It is hilarious to hear Lana vocalise these ideas and thoughts, I love the way she thinks and I love the independent little girl she's becoming :) 

Check out our new header!

Bernard made me a new header for Lana's blog! Check out how great it looks :)

If you're viewing on google reader or something like that, here it is, just for you (Uncle Ant!):

My Sensitive Girl

Lately, we have been having a couple of Movie Nights with Lana. She really likes to watch the stories and she will talk about them for a long time after she has seen them. She loves to watch the Tinkerbell movies (which she regularly watches on our iPod Touch, it's a saviour for when she's cranky at a restaurant!), and a week or two ago we watched Finding Nemo, fast forwarding the frightening parts because as Lana says, "I don't want to be scary" (hehe - so cute!)

Last night, we decided to watch The Lion King with her. Lana has been loving lions lately, and Bernard has been singing "In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight" with her, so it was a natural choice. We decided to fast forward some of the scary parts of the movie with Scar and all that, but for some reason we didn't fast forward the stampede when Mufasa died. It is not so much scary as it is sad.

As Simba was crying out for someone to help him, I looked over and saw a tear in Lana's eye, and as Simba began to cry, Lana told us: 

"The baby lion is crying. And Lana is crying too".

It's called suction...

People often talk about the short attention span of kids and how it's extremely easy for them to lose focus. Lana is no exception in this regard, and whenever we go out for dinner, we always try to make sure that we bring our iPod "survival kit" loaded with games and movies! I recall a few months back when what I call the "TESLA" group (an acronym comprising the names of the kids in the group) met up for dinner during Mid-Autumn Festival. By the end of dinner, each kid was sitting with either an iPhone or Android device, completely absorbed in the game they were playing (with the exception of Shayne of course, who was sitting quietly and eating away - she was the smart one)!

Having said that, however, I am sometimes amazed at how Lana can be fixated and focused on a particular thing for a really long period of time. For example, one of her favourite toys lately is "Play-Doh". She'll be happy sitting in her chair for hours smooshing them into different shapes. (One time, Lana climbed out of her chair in the middle of playing Play-Doh and walked off - so I assumed she had finished playing with them and I packed it all up. I thought there was a lot of truth in the old adage of "out of sight, out of mind" - at least until Lana came back a few minutes later and, upon noticing that her Play-Doh had vanished, burst hysterically into tears and wailed "I want more Play-Doh"!)

Oh, and when I mentioned "different shapes" above, I actually only mean "balls". For some reason, Lana is content with just making balls. Every time I suggest making something different, she'll respond with "no daddy, you make a ball", then proceed to rip off the tiniest piece of Play-Doh for me to roll into a ball. And oftentimes my attempts at discreetly rolling the Play-Doh into a worm or sausage is met with "no daddy, you make a ball", upon which Lana will promptly deem me unworthy of making a Play-Doh ball and confiscate the piece I'm working on. :| It's all right though, because the short-attention-span mechanism kicks into gear shortly, and within half a minute, Lana will be asking me to make a ball for her again. ;) Once or twice, we've also let her mix a few Play-Doh colours together, resulting in what she calls "multi-balls" (multi-coloured balls) which can be a source of fun for hours and hours. (Warning: Making lots of "multi-balls" will eventually lead you to only have a Play-Doh set consisting of only one colour - brown.)

The other things that she loves of late is "swimming" in the bathtub. A few days ago while she was happily splashing away in the bathtub, I let out the water too soon (despite her protests) and suddenly found myself faced with a traumatized little girl, bawling as she watched her fun going down the drain along with her bathwater. So yesterday, I decided on a different tack - I asked her to pull the plug to let the water out instead. As the water started to drain out, I put Lana's hand over the drain and told her: "it's called suction". I eventually convinced her to put her foot over the drain as well just for fun. Lana was fascinated by this - and my little ruse had worked. ;)

So bedtime finally came along, we said our prayers together, and then we tucked our little girl into bed. Nicole and I were sitting outside in the living room just unwinding and relaxing - she was blogging away on the computer and I was playing my video games on the TV screen. A few minutes went by when suddenly Lana called out from her bedroom:

"...it's called 'suction', daddy - it's called 'suction'..."

So much for the short-attention span theory.

I hope you all had as much fun for Christmas as we did, and may your New Year be filled with multi-balls and suction. :)

Potty Training - or not...

For a long time now, Lana has been "ready" to be toilet trained. She knows when she is going to the toilet, she has a fair amount of control over it - BUT she seems to have absolutely no desire to go on the toilet!

We've tried a little kiddy chair on the regular toilet, and we've tried a little potty, but she's not very interested in either of them.

Lana does like to run around with no nappy on, and she does this on a semi regular basis - only to pee all over the floor and laugh, saying "Do we pee on the floor?? NOOOOO!!" like it's the greatest joke of the year. 

At school, the teachers do some very basic "toilet training", taking the little ones to the mini-sized toilets there. They encourage us to actively train our kids at home as well - but I'm at a loss.

Part of me thinks that if she's not interested, she's not interested. I don't really care personally if she's not toilet trained in the next six months (after that I would care a bit more, I think!). I know that eventually she will actually want to go in the toilet instead of in her nappy, and maybe it's best to wait until she's ready (a bit like my philosophy for taking away her dummy, but that's another story for another day) - but then I also know that sometimes a gentle push is needed as well. 

I'd appreciate any hints or tips about the situation, how can I get her to WANT to go in the toilet? And should I push it now, or wait six months?