Courntey

Many of you know that Julia and her friend Nate have been friends since toddlerhood, and until they entered preschool and had different schedules, they had weekly play-dates. By the time she was a year old Julia could correctly identify Nate (or, in her words, "Nay,") and his parents, Neva and Thad ("Nefa and Fad.") We are unfortunately not able to get together as often now that the kids are older (for the aforementioned reason), but we still do try to have play-dates at least once a month. It's especially nice to play together because Nate has a younger sister, Anja, who is Madeleine's age (you may recall our pizza dinner play-date with kids running rampant.) Madeleine, however, is not quite as on top of the names of the other kids in Anja's family. While she can identify Anja and say her name quite well, she's kind of off base on the rest of the family. For whatever reason, she thinks that Neva is actually named Courtney, perhaps because whenever we hang out with them she hears Nate referring to me as Courtney and incorrectly assumes that label is for his mom. To further botch things up, Neva, in Madeleine's words, is actually "Courntey." Thad, on the other hand, is "Daddy." Which may possibly be an attempt to say "Thad," but seeing as Neva is me, I suppose it's also plausible that she thinks Thad's name is Daddy, or that since he's fulfilling a father-like role towards her, he actually is Daddy. At any rate, Madeleine and I spent quite a bit of time this afternoon watching videos of her that I have posted on the blog and on facebook ("Aunt Madeleine Twinkle Twinkle ogaime?" "Aunt Madeleine a hide and seek ogaime?") Once I got tired of replaying the same videos, I showed her some recent photos taken over Memorial Day weekend. When she saw pictures of Neva, she immediately pointed to her and said, "Courntey." Despite me correcting her multiple times, every picture of Neva was still "Courntey," so I guess that's what she has imprinted on her brain at the moment.

Speaking of botched up names, Julia came up with a really great silly version of the name "Isa," as in Isa from Dora the Explorer. She sang some really great songs about "Assa" today; songs which repeatedly used the name "Assa" over and over again.

I wonder if Assa and Butt Crocodile are friends.