Babies, Signing, and Ghosts

Madeleine's latest favorite thing to do is to pretend she's a baby.  This basically entails crawling around slowly on the floor and repeatedly saying, "Guh guh.  Guh guh."  It's especially helpful when, say, she decides to be a baby as I'm calling her to hurry up and go pee on the potty because Julia is waiting for a turn to poop.  Hanging around in anticipation for Madeleine to slowly plop her hands and knees along the floor as she crawls towards the bathroom, then crawls INTO the bathroom and up to the toilet, all the while uttering, "Guh guh.  Muh muh.  Put meh on theh potteh," REALLY helps speed things along.  It's even better when I'm asking her a question and her only response to me is an inanity of babbling.  "Guh guh.  Ga guh guh.  Ga ga goo guh guh."  But perhaps the best of all is when I'm attempting to carry an armload of groceries up the back stairwell and baby Madeleine drops to all fours at the base of the stairs and insists, "Muh muh!  I need yuh tuh CARRAH meh!"

Some videos of newly age-reversed baby Madeleine crawling around the house:





Julia is not talking baby talk, but she is speaking in a foreign language lately.  She has been learning sign language at school, and showed off her skills for me by signing the entire nursery rhyme "Peas Porridge Hot."  I'm hoping she'll gain enough sign language vocabulary throughout the school year that by spring she's able to sign "What Kind of Path Do You Take?" for me. 



Of course, the other foreign language in which Julia is gaining fluency is music notation.  She's feeling SO confident in her note-reading skills, in fact, that she decided to write a few songs down to teach to ME.  I had a piano lesson today, and had the pleasure of playing some of Julia's most freshly notated songs.  Among my new songs to practice are:

"Onoof."  At least, that's what I thought it was called.  The composer has assured me that it is, in fact, called "On Off," so don't let the spelling fool you. 

"The Love."  This one was especially hard for me to sight-read.  In the absence of an actual musical staff, I was kind of blindly taking stabs in the dark at what these notes are supposed to be.

So.  The teacher has become the pupil.  I guess I'll have to practice daily so I don't let my new piano teacher down.

And finally, Madeleine seems to still be in Halloween withdrawal, as she decided to make herself into Ghosta today.  Or, as she put it:  "I'm trying to be a ghost of INDIA.  Julia, check out where am I!"

The Ghost of India.  Check out where is she.