Happy New Year!

One of the magical experiences of being a parent is living those extraordinary moments when our little ones utter something that is so unexpectedly out-of-left-field, yet so incredibly profound, that its origins simply leave one totally amazed. Here is a sample of a few of our recent interactions.

Zoe can easily identify Kazakhstan on any world map and will quickly point to the specific location of Almaty within its boundaries (the fact that she can also locate Turkmenistan, Turkey, Cyprus, Canada, England, Germany [well, Bonn more specifically], and the USA is an added bonus). The other day, Zoe and I (Julian) were discussing Almaty – her original hometown. We engage in such talks for a variety of reasons, but most especially to allow her to retain a sense of “place”. For some reason, we were discussing Kok Tobe – the scenic overlook of the city that we had visited on numerous occasions during our extended stay in Almaty. Immediately she stated that we had all gone there “with those families for dinner”. And, in fact, we had. During our last week in Kazakhstan we had connected with several American families completing the final embassy paperwork for their own, respective adoptions and one of these outings had been to Kok Tobe (click here to see our 1 April 2008 blog entry). While there was nothing necessarily profound in Zoe’s statement, from our perspective it simply implied that she recalled viewing the pictures that we had taken from that occasion (we often look through our Almaty pictures). Playing along, I mentioned that we had taken the cable car up to the top and back again (and that we had engaged in a choking/gagging noises game that had mortified/embarrassed her other parent).

She immediately responded “no, we went up in a van” – “we sat in the back”.

I had forgotten this aspect of that day (the going up in the van part), but she was absolutely correct – the cable car had not been running at the time we wanted to go up. Now, we have NEVER actually discussed THIS aspect of the day, nor do we have any pictures of it on our blog or on computer. But the “sitting in the back” part…I could not recall where we sat – why on Earth would I? So I went to the blogs of the other families and found the following picture from Gen and Joel:

Note where we are sitting! How on earth could she have possibly recalled this arrangement –we certainly did not remember? This, to us, is simply incredible as she would have only been 15 months old at the time. But because she does produce these sorts of recollections with considerable frequency, it is not some simple aberration.

Language is another complex wonder to behold. Mastering its myriad inconsistencies and exceptions while simultaneously producing logical constructions (to a two-year-old) can generate some rather amusing results. In reply to the question “how much do you want” her response is often “a little much” or “a lot of much”. Similarly, her response to “do you want some” is often “a lot of some” – but strangely, never a “little some”.

Reflexive pronouns and other possessives also lend themselves to some interesting exchanges. We do like to challenge her with certain aspects of language just to gently prod her into thinking about what she is saying (and occasionally simply for our own amusement to the reaction, of course). Sometimes we will parrot exactly something she has said such as “All by myself”. She will respond with “No, all by MYself” – which will again be repeated verbatim by her somewhat malevolent parents. Her final retort will be “No, all by ZOEself” to indicate exact ownership. She will extend such personification into other sentences with such statements as “Mummy is going out all by Mummyself”. Other humourous possessives can be inadvertently created when words such as Migul (her head caregiver in the Almaty baby house) become “MYgul” or more rarely “Zoe’sgul” and Armenia (the location of our first family trip) became “MYmenia”. The nature of such learning constructions remains quite fascinating to us. (Okay, we still don’t really get out very much at the moment).

Over the past year, since we both essentially work from home via computer, Zoe has probably become rather too familiar with computers. She likes to identify the letters on the keyboard, to find out what “other keys” actually do and will often request that we bring up certain favourite applications/pictures. And she is completely addicted to YouTube - fortunately we generally have more than enough computers around to feed this addiction on those days when we simply have to resort to an in-house babysitter. She knows perhaps more computer terminology than a few of her grandparents, “gigs”, “terabyte” and “memory key” amongst others. In electronic stores she likes to play a game of find-the-memory-key display with Julian, pick one off the shelf and race over to Mum waving it in the air while shouting “Mummy, Mummy, 16 gigs”. On outings to the library, she likes to sit at the computers in the reference section, since she knows that neither parent is petrified of her destroying any of their key work data on these machines. While engaged in this activity, one day a woman asked her in one of those very cutesy, patronizing-to-a-two-year-old tones of voice “And what are you doing?”. Without missing a beat, Zoe looked up at her, retorted “computer tasks”, and returned to her work. Touché! The way it was said left the impression that she knew exactly what she was up to and needed to put this inquisitor in her place for asking such a stupid question – which it did. Where she put together those two terms though (and how often do we say “tasks” anyway?), we have no idea – one of those joys from a sharp-minded little lady. Oh, and how do we know that Zoe is now too familiar with technology? When she received her very own toy computer on Christmas Day, the VERY first thing that she did was to point out that it did not have a space bar. No pulling a fast one on her!

And finally one snippet of conversation in recognition of the season. The other night, we went to the Keogh’s for a reunion dinner of Almaty adoptees (Orin, Nickolas, Zoe), together with Sue and Craig Bradshaw whose son Nickolas came from the same Almaty Baby House as Zoe. As is usual practice with Zoe, once we name one person, we subsequently have to explicitly identify everybody else. Hence, Zoe and Julian ran through the list of names of Nickolas’s parents and sister, and then on to Orin. Orin’s sister Ashling was swiftly recalled, but we momentarily blanked on the parents. Memory slowly returning, his mother was identified as Mary. The question to Zoe was, given Mary was his Mother, could she remember what Orin’s Dad was called – to which she confidently replied “Joseph”. The recounting of this story delighted Dave Keogh since the implication was that he was Father to the Christ-child (wonder if he has ever seen The Omen?).

And what better way to acknowledge the season is there than that?

Following are photos from our gathering at the Keoghs.

Left to right: Ashling Keogh, Zoe, Nickolas Bradshaw, Hannah Bradshaw, Orin Keogh - all enjoying pizza!

Nickolas, 1 year old (will be 2 in March), is from the same baby house as Zoe.

Orin, age 4 (will be 5 in April), from Karakastek (just outside Almaty).

Nickolas and Orin exchanging pizza eating tips.
The three Kazakh cuties.

Along the theme of humourous (to us) Zoeisms, a handful of Zoe’s comments have made it to Sara’s Facebook page over the last few months. We share them again here.

Zoe, with suitcase in hand: "Mommy, bye bye. I going to airport."
Sara: "Where are you going?"
Zoe: "I going to January to get my birthday. I get it and bring it back to my house."
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On Thanksgiving morning: "Mommy, are you going to put your Thank You clothes on?"
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Zoe to Pooh, "My mommy is your grandma."
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Sitting up to the breakfast table: “I want an English muffin without the English.”
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To close out the year, here are a few random photos from the past few weeks. Happy New Year to everybody! Here’s to a wonderful 2010.