All By Her Birdie Self | Additional Notes

Two of the activities Birdie insists on doing all by her Birdie self demand additional notes: getting in and out of the car and her car seat, and putting on her socks and shoes.

This morning, our crack photography stringer was able to shoot this video of Clara making the ascent into the car and her car seat. Birdie Nation, please note that it takes her a little over three minutes. This is why you might think that this whole all-by-myself bit is uber frustrating because it can really slow things up. But Birdie would quickly teach you the lesson that it is better to figure out how to set her up to achieve what success she can all by herself, because if she even remotely senses that it's possible, if conditions were only just so, she will let you have it which slows up the show even more and is thus, more frustrating, to say nothing of the fact that Birdie is then wailing.

Sometimes, when the going gets rough, Julie thinks of the advice of one of her dear friends, who says that when she's faced with some parenting-related question, and she's not sure what to do, she thinks back to the values she's trying to instill in them, and sets her course by them. Before Joe was born, Julie and Ted talked about the values they most hoped to teach him. By the time Clara was born, those values hadn't changed: kindness and confidence.

So besides the fact that it is plain as day that Birdie has a mind of her own, it helps to remember that a mind of one's own is, in fact, one of the things we're after here! Which means that frustrating though it may be in some moments, to slow down, and figure out how to make things such that Birdie can do it all by her Birdie self, it's worth it in the end.

But we said there was another note, and there is. Joe and Clara have a stuffed animal friend known as Kitty. In truth, there are many kitties, but at the same time, there is only one Kitty. Kitty is purple, and is one of those doll's whose clothes have multiple fasteners with which children can practice their getting-dressed skills. Kitty sports a pair of awesome neon green, thick, terry cloth socks, and rad iridescent pink kicks. (In other words, Kitty is as fashion forward as the bambini.)

Kitty

Clara has taken a shine to Kitty's socks, and can manage to put them on her own feet most of the time (Kitty's paws are another story). Clara would desperately like to complete her look as Kitty does, with the iridescent pink sneakers, but alas, they are too small, much to Birdie's chagrin. Where there's a Birdie's will, there's a way, except when it comes to Kitty's shoes.

The Socks, (One of) the Shoes

All By Herself (Blue Painters Tape)

As we recently reported, Birdie is getting rather good at getting her point across. Very often, her point is that she would like to do something all by her Birdie self. Things she has expressed a preference to do all by her Birdie self in just this past week include, in no particular order: getting in and out of the car seat, putting on her socks and shoes, picking out her clothes, getting dressed, getting in and out of the bathtub, getting in and out of her crib, and getting in and out of her high chair. No doubt, Birdie Brigade, you have noticed a theme--i.e. these are all tasks that are rather difficult for your 21-month-old-young-lady to accomplish with absolutely no assistance, because although ours in large in spirit, she is small in stature.

So it is that things have run off the rails quite a bit in recent days. The train goes off the track typically at one of two junctures: the dopes Clara lives with intervene before she has ascertained for herself that she will, after all, need some assistance; or, too much assistance is proffered, albeit at the proper juncture. In either case, Birdie will fall to pieces and want what amounts to a do-over, or will simply fall to pieces and make it no further than ruing these dopes she lives with who cannot understand that she just wants to do it herself!

So it was that the night before last, Birdie went to bed in a diaper secured with a lengthy strip of blue painter's tape (a roll of which is kept handy in the kitchen for labelling frozen foods and show 'n' share items). Birdie wanted to put on her pajamas herself. Intervention happened too quickly, and then there was too much intervening, and by the time all was said and (not) done, Birdie was beside herself and wanted nothing to do with pajamas she wasn't donning herself, in toto, and it was past the time she should have been ensconced in Julie's lap reading books. So the daft dopes that Clara lives with thought, "Whatever. You want to roll to bed in a diaper only, so be it."

Except, she kept undoing one of the tabs. That was when Julie remembered reading somewhere about duct taping down the diaper tabs of a diaper-stripper-offer, and also that Ted spent some of his tender youth in backwards pajamas, the better to foil his efforts to unzipper and shed them. So Julie went to the kitchen and got the roll of painter's tape, and wrapped it around a confused Clara's midsection three times, over the diaper's tab, with the tape's end at Clara's back.*

Not such dopes after all, these people Clara lives with!

*The photography staff regrets that it was unable to document the scene, but Birdie was fit to be tied, and it was past time for books.

Bubber Birdie

So Birdie is getting very good at getting her point across. In the morning, she will let us know if she wants yogurt or cereal. She is better at saying cereal, so if she wants yogurt, and you are a big dum-dum and don't catch that, she'll let you know by bellowing "No!" and pushing the cereal away as it heads toward her.

Tonight, we had minestrone soup and bread with butter for dinner. Before we'd all sat down, we found Clara at the table, where she'd scaled her high chair, helping herself to the butter--with Julie's butter knife.

Once we sat down, Birdie spent the entire meal merrily chirping "bub-ber," by which she, of course, meant butter. She was eager to secure more bubber, on bread, before she'd even finished whatever piece happened to be in her mouth, so as you conjure this scene in your head, you have to picture the bubber chirps periodically rising in pitch and increasing in frequency as they issued from Bubber Birdie. (When made to say please, she would say "peeeeeeeeeeas.")

Birdie, Sentences, Socks, and Sentences About Socks

A few months ago, Clara surprised Julie while they were down in the basement by saying, "I see you!"--twice, and in contexts that made sense! Julie was folding laundry while Clara was popping in and out of the house tent from the larger tent and tunnel system that comes out in the summer, and once Clara looked through the window to say "I see you!" and another time, she popped out one of the doors. "I see you!" is now one of Clara's standard conversational sallies. But, avid listeners among Birdie's Brigade would discover, were you here, Dear Readers, that Birdie not infrequently strings together sentences that are a few words long. Examples from this weekend included, "I go to Target," "Where the sock go?", and "I need socks."

Here, we pause to note that Birdie is very taken with socks. So much so that last night, she requested socks from Ted when he was putting on her--footed, mind you--pajamas, which he put on Birdie, underneath her pajamas, and another pair from Julie, which she put on Birdie, over the pajamas, not realizing there were socks under the pajamas. That would be three layers on a night so warm, Julie didn't need a coat when Ted took her out on their date.

Clara has a baby doll in her crib that wears booties (socks) and a headband, and you know, Fans, when this particular baby doll came into our lives, Julie at least thought, "I should really remove these smaller accessories, or we will be forever putting them back on." Julie had done this with Clara's other baby doll which came shod in booties as well, and sporting a frankly rather unflattering bonnet, and a pacifier, all of which reside in a bowl on top of the bookcases. But for whatever reason, Julie let Baby Doll II have her ridiculous headband and the booties (which really don't compliment her jeans), and lately, every night, when we are putting Joe to bed, Birdie pops up to sleepily ask, "Where the sock go? Where the sock go?", with the "What?" hand motion. We aren't sure when it will get old, but we can report that it is still funny after two weeks.

Zippy

Joe now routinely zips his own coat zippity zip. Saturday morning, he was felling so confident that he wanted to help Clara with her zipper, which he did, with only a small assist, as Clara's coat is reversible and so the "pull tab" on the "slider"* flips about in a way that is a little confusing for your confident, yet still beginning, zipper zipper.

[Clara! Stop wiggling! The pull tab keeps flipping around the the back!]

[Doh! You didn't zip your zipper up to your chin. I do it. Nice new kicks, by the way.**]

*"Definitions you should know to assist you in determining your zipper needs," per the "zippersource" website.

**Keen-eyed readers will note that Our Hero is rockin' some pretty sweet new kicks. They are chocolate brown Pumas, with lime green details and soles. He was told he can run fast like a Puma in them, but outside. Not inside.