The 97th Post!

Rather than celebrate the 100th blog post, the Daddy Person had decided to mark the 97th post instead. Squeaker marked the occasion by being a tough girl. She was running on the sidewalk and slid. Her tights got the worst of it. She has had a busy week adjusting to being home and not being surrounded by doting grandparents and great-grandparents, aunt and uncles. We have spent much of this week working with her on that most difficult of lessons, doing what we're told the first (or second time for that matter). When not working on that Squeaker has been practicing with being very sweet. I asked her if she wanted to get a present for Aunte Brite. With out missing a beat, she said "Yes a turtle and a alligator for daddy." Don't worry Brite, I'll keep pushing for a sweater.

Story of the Week

One of the first things she and Aunte Brite did was visit her fan club at the library. On the way home, Brite overheard Squeaker saying slowly and carefully, "When we get home we will probably read books." Silence from the front of the car. "When we get home we will possibly read books."

Bedtime Friends

No new aliases this week, but in order to throw off our investigators, Squeaker bedtime friends have been cycling through many of the old ones. Most notably, after a long hiatus, Clifford has been masqurading as Dr. Mugwort.

Squeaker and I have been visiting her grandparents this week. Saturday we arrived at my parents house at nap time. It seemed like it I would get a lot of resistance (on many fronts) to putting her to bed right away, so I let her play a while. She was pretty punchy when I put her to bed. Even so, I was a little surprised then when she asked me to kiss her foot. The Daddy person loves Squeaker and all, but she's been walking on that foot for a long time, and you have do draw the line someplace, so I said no. Besides, its really hard to kiss her for when I am already wrapped around her little finger.

She does not have any aversion to kissing her feet though. In case you've forgotten how flexible little people are, she had no trouble pulling her foot up to her face and kissing it. Just in case her foot didn't know it was loved at that point. She also pulled it up by her head and gave it a couple of big hugs.
During breakfast on Saturday these two numbers were up on the table. Squeaker had finished her eggs and was down playing. She waked up to the '4' and deliberately ran her fingers along the letters and said 'four'. We were all flabbergasted. Oblivious to the gasps, Squeaker puttered around a bit then came back to the table, ran her fingers along the letters "t-w-0" and said 'six'.

Story of the Week

Squeaker and Brite were running errands last week when...

Squeaker: Look Aunt Brite! There is a little white doggie over there. I will get to pet it sometime?
Brite: Sweetie, I don't know that lady and her doggie, so I don't think so. I think you will get to see some doggies this week, though.
S: My get to go to Grammy's house! There will be doggies there! She has lot of doggies. Dorey and Freckles and Heidi and Freckles and Dorey.
B: Well, maybe you can pet them.
S: Aunt Brite, I can't pet Dorey.
B: Why not?
S: Dorey gets frustrated about me sometimes. I can pet Heidi. She is nice.
For the record that Daddy person thinks it is inconceivable that Squeaker used 'frustrated' in a sentence. Furthermore, I do not think it means what she thinks it means.
A little later on in the trip the her thoughts moved on to other adventures.
S: Aunt Brite, my will go to fish like Connor. Daddy will show me. My will fish all by myself, too. My will obey Daddy when we fishing.

Bedtime Friends Watch

We were away from most of our bedtime friends this week. We got home from Thanksgiving dinner with some of the Daddy person's friends last night and Squeaker was very glad to see Ducky and Froggy. Ducky was quickly renamed Baby Linda, at which point I couldn't resist asking if Froggy was "Mr. Nelson"....

Squeaker's Entourage

Since Squeaker has had her first real cold this week she hasn't been very photogenic, so I don't have a great picture of her as I promised. We have mentioned recently that Squeaker has been in the habit of renaming her bedtime friends, sometimes weekly, sometimes daily. Sometimes they are named after people we have seen, sometimes after characters her library books. The editors have decided add another weekly feature. In addition to the story of the week, we will also let you know what roles her bedtime friends have been playing this week.

Hope Bunny, AKA Hopa - Past Aliases: Gramie, Rachel, Mrs. Rayome, Mrs. Carter, Mrs. Arllen, Froggy's Mom, Nurse Laura, Elizabeth's Mommy

Ducky - Past Aliases: Jake, Kamile, Mr. Arllen

Froggy - Past Aliases: Granddad, Libbie, Jacob, Eliot, Froggy, Dr. Morita

Clifford - Past Aliases: Elena, Baby Sidney, Elizabeth, Dr. Mugwort

Squeaker has a new favorite song, her previous favorites include "Cows", "Advarks", and "I like blue lemurs". Her new favorite comes from a recent episode of Sesame Street: Feist's 1, 2, 3, 4. Play at your own risk, especially if you have a tendency for songs to get stuck your head. The editors of Squeakerpants.com are not responsible for what may happen if you show this video to a toddler, though Squeaker seems to really get the numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4 now. If your child becomes truly obsessed, you can find a couple of mp3 versions out there too . Aside from some counting, this song has inspired a lot more singing. Squeaker sings now, often, out of tune, and mostly original compositions. Tonight she sang that all time favorite, the 'some' song, "Some, somey, somey, some, SOME", instead of eating her last piece of chicken.

Story of the Week - Squeaker provided more than half of the past aliases of her bedtime friends. Put another way while we were cataloging them during dinner. Not surprisingly, she knew as many as the Daddy person and Aunte Brite combined.

Basketball not Ball Ball

Squeaker and I have both been sick this week. She seems to be over her cold. The Daddy person is still working on getting rid of it. We went to our first basketball game of the season today. One of the Daddy person's colleges beat another of his colleges. I thought of course of going to 'ball ball' games with her last winter. Then she kept staring at the jumbo-tron, pointed at lot and periodically said 'ball ball'. Now from our seats in the rafters, she asks me, "What that blue thing?". Since one of these schools has blue as a color, there were lots of blue things, "That's the out of bounds line. No. Scoreboard? No. The mascot! Yes". She liked sitting in her seat and spent most of the first half eating the provisions I had brought along. We spent halftime wandering the arena together watching the 'bimp'. She sat peacefully on my lap during the second half. So peacefully that I realized she had fallen asleep. She slept until the final minute, despite a very noisy crowd.

In blog posts long ago I made the joke that Squeaker would sign please when she wanted a book read to her, because it seemed like she was memorizing them. Brite wanted me to mention that the last phase of reading Squeaker a book is that she sits on the floor and reviews each page, doing her best to retell the story.

Story of the Week
Brite: Squeaker are you awake?
Squeaker: Yes. (softly and curled up on her pillow) There was a 'pider on my pink blanket.
B: There was a what?
S: A 'PIDER was on my pink blanket over there.
B: What did you do?
S: My pulled my legs up, up, up.
B: How did you feel about there being a spider in your bed?
S: My pulled my legs up.
The next day (after Squeaker's linens had been laundered), Squeaker got a wooden spider from one of her puzzles and hid it under her bed.
S: (giggling) There is a 'pider under my bed. Find it Brite!

That's all for this week. I didn't take any pictures, so I don't have any new ones to post this evening. I'll get some good ones this week.

Better Bedtime

Sorry for the late post. The Daddy person went to bed early last night and forgot to blog first. That said, it has been a quiet week for Squeaker. The bedtime troll apparently got sold off with the rest of the Halloween costumes. Bedtime is still a little drawn out but is far less acrimonious, mainly because Squeaker has changed tactics. When I put her to be last night, we had the usual one more hug and one more kiss. As I headed for the door, she launched herself from the bed, not as a monster but to get one more sweet hug. The daddy person finds it very hard maintain a maximum of three goodnight hugs under such circumstances. Have a good week.

Scary Creatures and Halloween

Squeaker had fun at Halloween. She's busy introducing herself to a terrified kitten who shortly thereafter swore off catnip. She also made the rounds hunting candy with a couple of dragons. In the interest of full disclosure, the spooky season has brought out Squeaker's inner demon.

Bedtime has become a bit trying recently. Aunt Brite and the Daddy person have allowed requests for extra goodnight kisses and hugs to prolong the bedtime routine. Squeaker has become ever more demanding in the pursuit of a few more minutes of bedtime. This week we drew a line in the sand.

I spent some time this afternoon searching the internet for all manner of female imps and demons from ancient mythology but I was unsuccessful in finding one that accurately depicted the bedtime monster. The best representation I can find is from the penultimate scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Specifically, I am thinking of that beautiful apparition who smiles sweetly before turning into a shrieking zombie that helps consumes the bad guys in holy fire.

When I put Squeaker in bed last night, I succumbed to a couple of reasonable requests for kisses, and then made it plain that I was leaving. She launched from her bed to the middle of a room, flexed like bodybuilder in the throws 'roid rage, and screamed for 'one more kiss'. I put her back in bed, got her calmed down and said goodnight. Whereupon the scene repeated itself and I left the demon shrieking in her bedroom. Shortly thereafter she went to sleep. Squeaker either doesn't remember the demon or doesn't hold a grudge. She woke up this morning all sweet and nice.

Having been away most of this week teaching, Brite wanted me to point point out, without a trace of bitterness, that the demon has been around all week and didn't just arrive with Halloween. Also, in the interest of not leaving our readers thunderstruck by the horror of this revelation, Aunt Brite has suggested that I finish with a few more pictures of Squeaker and her friends.

Crow Tastes Really Good With Salt

Last week I spent a little bit of time talking about Squeaker's sleeping habits. In particular I mentioned that "Inexplicably it still doesn't occur to her that with the sides down, there really isn't anything keeping her in bed." I wrote that on Sunday night. Well... No, no, let me start at the beginning.

We lowered the side on the crib at my parent's house, but she still had somewhat of a barrier between her and the outside world. The next time she slept in her bed was Tuesday afternoon. We got back a home a couple of hours after nap time. The late start did not dissuade her from chatting with her friends. She finally fell asleep after 5 pm. Since she needed to have dinner and some awake time before she went to bed at 8, Uncle Mack and I went up to get her out of bed. She was sound asleep. Waking her up is an unusual experience. To say that we almost always let her wake up on her own would give you the impression that occasionally we wake her up.I don't recall the last time I woke her up, so I was surprised when Uncle Mack and I stomped into the room and she didn't wake up. We talked to her. Not a muscle twitched. Uncle Mack and I realized together that something was amiss. We also thought it was a little funny that she was scrunched up on the left side of the bed. Her head was resting on Hopa and her feet were on the rail. The bed is maybe two and a half feet wide. Squeaker is every bit of three feet tall, so it wasn't a very comfortable position. I thought about getting the camera at that point, just because it was such a funny position. I decided that even bounced off the ceiling a flash going off in your eyes would be a rough way to get up. I did get the camera upstairs before she got out of bed, but first we called Aunt Brite. I yelled downstairs (which also didn't wake Squeaker up) and told her she had to come upstairs too. When Brite came into the room, I asked how many books she had let Squeaker take to bed. The answer was three. That would be the pile on the left. Squeaker apparently got bored with those three books, because we found her with those three on the left and that pile on the right too. We don't know if she brought them all at once or piecemeal, but Squeaker carried all those books with her into her bed. If you look back a the first picture, you can see that she was actually sleeping on a couple of them. She actually hasn't gotten out of bed since then, or at least she's figure out not to make is so obvious. We've started cataloging the books that go into bed with her to make sure that she isn't working a bait and switch on us.

We enjoyed our visit to the zoo on Monday. I took a few pictures, but most of them framed a wild animal between my parents and Squeaker's head. Artsy, but not that interesting. She did make friends with this bronze panda while we were there. We saw elephants, seals, a cheetah, zebras (penned next to the cheetah, which is just wrong), small and large hippos, pandas, and a very bad orangutang. I will let Squeaker tell her about her.

Story of the Week

S: 'Rangutang up on wire.
D: What did the Orangutang do when it was on the wire.
S: 'Rangutang almost pee peed on Granddaddy.