Inside Madeleine's Head

Another post in which I wonder what on earth goes through Madeleine's head. 

This is the conversation we had this morning:

MADELEINE: Mommy?  What kind of LAND do Halloween people live in?
ME: Uh...maybe they live in a haunted house.
MADELEINE: No.  Mommy.  What kind of LAAAAND do Halloween people live in?
ME: Uhhhh...maybe they live in Halloween Town.
MADELEINE: Uh, no, I don't think so.  Mommy?  Did you know I was thinking about SOUTH AMERICA?

I *should* have known she was thinking about South America.  After all, what says Halloween more than South America??  Of COURSE that's the kind of land Halloween people live in.  

Then, a bit later in the day, while Madeleine was coloring in her Dora coloring book, she suddenly decided we needed to do this:

MADELEINE: So, Mama, let's have a little THING going on right now.  So.  Pretend that you're Dora. 

ME: Okay.

MADELEINE: Dora!  Dora!

ME: Yes?

MADELEINE: Merry CHRISSAMASSA!

ME: Merry Chrissamassa.  Feliz Navidad.

MADELEINE: (satisfied) Okay, Mama?  Now it's the end of our AD.

 

 

That was a really great ad we did.  I'm sure anyone overhearing our ad would want to buy our product.  Whatever that may be.  Christmas greetings, perhaps??  What do you readers say?  Are you sold?  Will you hire Madeleine and I to write the text for your next Christmas card?

 

 

After coloring, Madeleine pulled out the board game "Guess Who" and asked me to play with her.  Guess Who is a great game for Madeleine to play, because she understands the rules and how the game works and is able to play her own turn without any help.  For those of you unfamiliar with the game, each player gets a full board of character faces, and each player also picks a card which has upon it one of the characters.  Through a series of yes and no questions, the players attempt to be the first to correctly guess which character is on the other player's card.  Madeleine gets the basic logic of what to do after her question is answered; for instance, if she asks if the character is a boy, and the answer is yes, she knows to flip down all of the girl character cards on her board.  I have noticed, however, that her process-of-elimination skills need some work.  She usually starts out with a bang, asking me a question about my character that eliminates more than half of the people on the board.  Once we get down to slimmer pickings, however, her questions get more and more random and less informative.  

 

For example, here's how one round went:

 

MADELEINE: Uh, does your person have WHITE HAIR?

ME: Yes.  

MADELEINE: (putting down the pictures of every character without white hair, leaving only a handful of people remaining.)

ME: Does yours have a hat?

MADELEINE: Yes.

ME: (putting down all the people without hats on my board.)

MADELEINE: Uh, does yours have glasses?

ME: No.

MADELEINE: (putting down the pictures of the one or two white-haired people with glasses.)

ME: Is yours a boy?

MADELEINE: No.

ME: (putting down all the boys.)

MADELEINE: (down to the last three cards or so) Uhhhh...does yours have...BROWN HAIR?

ME: No.

MADELEINE: (closely examining her three white-haired people, then keeping them all standing)

ME: Honey, you already know I don't have brown hair, because remember you asked if I have white hair and I said yes?  Why don't you ask if I have brown eyes instead?

MADELEINE: No, Mama, I said brown HAIR.

 

Yeah.  She really gets it.  What a fierce competitor!  Willing to stick to her guns and eliminate NOBODY rather than change her question!  Playing it fast and loose and making risky moves.  I like it.

 

 

At other points, after narrowing down most of the characters, Madeleine starts asking questions that are either totally subjective or don't really help her to make further strides in the game.  

 

A few of the questions she asked:

 

"Does yours have...(blowing up her cheeks) uh... PUFFY CHEEKS?"

 

"Does yours have eyelashes?"

 

"Does yours look pretty?"

 

 

After she and I played a few rounds, Madeleine and Daddy did a quick game before he had to get back to working (which he is doing from our house today.)  Watching the whole process was quite the experience.

 

For example, when Madeleine's board looked like this,:

 

 

her question to Ethan was: "Does yours have a green hat?"

I might have gone for "does yours have facial hair?"  or "does yours have a bald head?", but hey, that's just me.  Madeleine was at least able to deduce that NONE of the remaining characters on her board needed to be flipped down after Ethan confirmed that his person did NOT have a green hat.

When it was down to the last two people, Bill and Herman, Madeleine was ready to ask the game-changing question.

MADELEINE: Okay.  Daddy.  Does yours have a BIG NOSE, because of him?  (pointing at Herman.)

Big-nosed Herman


So, you know, we have a little work to do on deductive reasoning, but all in all, Madeleine seems to enjoy playing this game whether she stalls towards the end of each round or not.

Now Madeleine is back to coloring in her Dora book.  She just completed a picture of Dora and Boots by a Christmas tree.  Madeleine colored Dora's mouth in all black, then told me, "Mama?  Dora is saying 'Merry Christmas' with chocolate GUM in her mouth, so it comes out like 'Mmmmmrrrr Chrrrrr.'  And Boots is saying, 'Merry Christmas' and is that BETTER?  Because...Boots DOESN'T have any chocolate gum in his mouth."

Ahh, if  could only get inside her brain for a day, I'm sure it would be a pretty amazing, wild and crazy trip.