Lost in Translation

Hailey has been talking a lot lately. It seems like she learns at least one or two words a day. She has also been saying a few sentences here and there. She said her first sentence a couple of weeks ago after she handed me a Tigger doll. I asked her who it was, and she said, "It is Tigger!" Most of her sentences after that have been short two-word sentences like "All gone," or "Want juice." I'm so excited because she is getting much better at communicating what she wants, which has drastically cut down on the guessing games.

Some of her newer words still need practice, but I think they're so cute, I don't mind of she says them her way for a while. For example, she calls monkeys "bunkeys" and calls shoes "shiz." She still calls me "MomMom," which I hope she keeps forever. I think my absolute favorite is "Kank you!" (Thank you).

Sometimes, it does cause problems, though. The other day she was standing in the kitchen pointing at the cupboard and asking for a "gooky." I looked through the cupboard and couldn't find anything that looked like a "gooky." I was getting frustrated, as was Hailey, so I said "I have no idea what a gooky is." She promptly walked into her bedroom, got her copy "If you Give a Mouse a Cookie," and said "GOOKY!" Ohhhhh, cookie. Why didn't you say so?

Stumped by a Third Grader

Last Friday after we had picked up Jesse and Marie, we were eating dinner and I asked Jesse what he was learning about in school. He started telling me about how bears hibernate and sleep all through the winter. Then he asked me this:

"Why don't we hibernate in the winter?"

Now, that is a very simple question, but for the life of me, I could not think of a good answer to why we don't hibernate in the winter. After all, after the excitement of the holidays are over, I usually do feel like hibernating through January and February. After thinking long and hard about it, I came up with a thoughtful, philosophical answer that works for almost any situation like this:

"I don't know....Go ask your dad."