Life with Meredith

Every so often, I like to blog about a bunch of little things that make life with Meredith so fun, interesting, puzzling, and hilarious. So here are a few tidbits....

* SHAPES *
We have been working on teaching Meredith her shapes. As you know, she knows octagon ("ah-gun"), but there are some others she loves too: diamond, heart, and oval. When she sees these shapes anywhere, in any context, she tells us. There are a few shapes she has yet to mention: square, circle, and triangle. Our daughter is apparently a connoisseur of obscure shapes.

* COLORS *
We did not have much luck for quite a while with colors. Meredith didn't seem to care about it, or maybe just didn't understand the concept. Once she started to understand what we were fishing for, she started to oblige us with a reply when we asked what color something was, but would always just name some random color (she must be thinking "I know they want something from that list"). She has now progressed to the point of non-random replies -- instead, the answer is always "blue"!

* HER NAME *
We know we gave our daughter a killer of name to pronounce, so we felt fine when she answered the question "What's your name" with "ME!". Hey, the first two letters is better than nothing! But over the last month she has moved from Mayith, to Maydith, to something with a slight middle syllable...Mayadith. Very impressive!

* SPECIAL WORDS *
There is a little Canadian flag Meredith likes to play with, and she also notices flags everywhere. Seemingly unrelatedly, she also loves frogs. And she eats with a fork. What these things have in common (flag, frog, fork) is that when a child pronounces g as "k" and doesn't get the subtleties of "l" and "r", and isn't too particular about vowel sounds, they all sounded like the same special word. I'm happy to say that the pronunciation is moving up, for instance with "frog" now more like "fwok" (and often "fwokkie"). She has gotten the "g" at the end of flag, and perfected the vowel, but still no "l"....I guess that's an improvement?!

*FOOD *
It is probably in the course of eating that I most often think to myself, "Yep, she is adopted." Although Meredith does like (and say quite well) cake, chocolate, candy, and pie, these are not her very favorite foods. Her favorite foods -- the ones we bribe her with to get her to eat her meat or other main dish -- are: peas, carrots, lettuce (yes, lettuce, no dressing), green beans, broccoli, cucumbers, corn, raw onions (yes, raw), grapes, and mandarin oranges. The "will not eat" list is short, but includes mashed potatoes. WHAT?!?!? She is truly a mystery. I like mashed potatoes so much that I said so in my sleep once (just ask Rob).

* THE STRAY "F" *
For whatever reason, when Meredith started pronouncing words ending in "p" she liked to turn it into a "pf". At least a few of these are still lingering...when she hears an alarm clock, she says "beepf!", when she wants a sip of our drink she says "popf!", and when she wants her favorite fresh fruit she says "grapef!".

* BOOTS *
Someone from church passed down some amazing fashion-statement boots that Meredith enjoys. I have a pair of boots as well, and when I put them on yesterday, Meredith looked at her own sneakered feet and said "Off! Mayadith! Boots!" so we had to go put them on. I'll be sure to take a pic next time she wears them.

Well, I could write more but I'm out of time....so until later, thanks for reading.