Binky, Cowie, and Bingo

Madeleine broke the "binky rule" today, by which I mean she is only allowed to have her pacifier at nap and night. She snuck upstairs to her room and came back down with binky and "Cowie" (her name for her little cow Taggie that she sleeps with; in old blog posts you can see her sleeping with Cowie on her head or face, which hasn't still hasn't really changed.) Since it was so close to bedtime I decided it would be more hassle than it was worth to try and return the beloved items to her crib, so instead I gave her the evening sippy cup of milk that she has each night before bed and planned to bring her up as soon as she was done. Unfortunately, she found herself facing a conundrum. With binky occluding ability to actually consume the milk, she had to make a choice: lose a precious few minutes with binky, or forgo the milk. She attempted a compromise, taking binky out of her mouth for a few seconds at a time to take a sip of milk, then popping it back in. After about 15 minutes had passed and she had hardly had more than a few quick swallows of milk, I came to the conclusion that I had to take matters into my own hands or she would never get to bed. During one of her non-binky moments, as she sipped her milk, I stealthily palmed binky and walked away. I optimistically hoped for out of sight out of mind, but of course she was too smart for that. So smart, in fact, that she had to speak a few full sentences about her missing binky: "Uh-oh! Where binky go? I don't know! (looking around) I don't see it!"

Speaking of smart, I have been attempting to go over the letters of her name with her, just to give her a basic sense of name recognition. Julia was a much easier name to learn, containing only 5 letters, all of them different. I have felt a sense of dread trying to teach Madeleine the 9 letters of her name, with so many e's popping up all over the place. To my happy surprise, however, she seemed to recognize the letters when recited out loud as we played in the yard today.

ME: M-A-D-E-L-E-I-N-E
MADELEINE: Madeleine!

I was so proud of my genius daughter that I had to bring her over to Ethan and Julia and make her repeat her performance, which she did with flying colors.

It wasn't until later on, as I read her a book, that I began to second guess my assumption that she recognized the particular letters as being those in her name:

ME: There was a farmer had a dog and Bingo was his name-o. B-I-N-G-O...
MADELEINE: (triumphantly) Madeleine!

Nice try, honey, but no.