Sitting Pretty

HG loves climbing onto "grown-up" chairs and sitting up high like everyone else. She also loves wearing hats, indoors or outdoors, rain or shine, she loves them. Here she is sitting pretty in her favourite red beret and her favourite stripey tights which have been worn and washed so often that they are starting to come apart...

One of HG's current projects is learning the Mah Nishtanah for Pesah. It started as a joke between Ima and Abba that HG would have to say it this year, but with HG's apptitude for copying anything and everything she hears, Abba and Ima soon realised that HG was actually memorising the Mah Nishtanah. So far she has the first line down pat, and will say it to whomever will listen "Mah nishnatanah halayla haZEH mikol haLEYLOT!"

"Where babies come from?"

That's the question she asked Ima today in a crowded restaurant.
"Where babies come from?"

"From Imas' tummies," was Ima's natural response.

Then came the killer: "How they get there?"

"Hashem put them there" - what else can you say?

She seemed satisfied with that answer: "Babies grow in Ima's tummy!
Hashem puts babies in Ima's tummy!"

Park day

HG continues to adore the park. Today she was just excited to be out in the pleasantly warm sunny weather and spent most of the time running around on the grass and hugging trees :-) She wasn't even too interested in the swings.

Purim

HG chose a First Nations costume for Purim this year. She adores the dress and would wear it every day if she could. Here she is practicing walking down the steps outside her home.

HG was very aware of Purim this year. She helped Ima bake hamentaschen, and seemed to relish this new word, often asking for hamentaschen even when she didn't really want to eat one, just to see them and have a chance to use the funny sounding word.

She really enjoyed telling people that on Purim "go to shul, hear Abba read Megilla", and was a pretty good girl at the Megilla reading, aside from once or twice announcing loudly "that's Abba!", and being a little unsure when exactly she was supposed to make noise with her grugger...

She had a blast playing with all her cousins at the se'udah, enjoying the fancy dress and in between noshing on the huge variety of salads at the meal. She also requested tea from the rather stunned hostess - herbal and fruit teas are on of HG's latest passions and she loves having some with her meal.

After a while when she seemed to have switched only to speaking in English, she has now started speaking in Hebrew again too, and has a good awareness of when to use which language. On Purim afternoon the family went to cousins who only speak Hebrew and upon seeing the baby grand-daughter in her buggy, she straight away said "tinoket b'agala", a Hebrew phrase she hasn't used before, but has often heard. She seemed to know that this was the right place to say her Hebrew phrase, rather than use the English "baby in buggy".

She also loves translating. When one cousin presented her with a big picture book, HG sat there pointing out items of interest, naming them in one language, then translating to the other "cat - hatul", "flower-perah", "adom - red" and the like. Sometimes it really feels like she is drilling herself, Abba and Ima sometimes find her sitting with her books "reading" to herself in the same manner.

Of late it seems that she has been working on her Hebrew, picking up mostly Hebrew books and trying to use more vocabulary. In English she speaks in full, often grammatical, sentences, but in Hebrew she is still more hesitant, using more single words, or at most basic short sentences like "zeh dubi", whereas in English she might say "that's my big brown teddy bear".