Teaching a Toddler to Talk/Pizza Party!

TerraDactyl saw a music video the other day about a pizza party (which she listened to nonstop for like an hour).  They described (and showed) how to make a pizza in the song.  She then spent the next 20 minutes begging me for a pizza party.  I told her we could eat pizza for dinner, but we'd need to go grocery shopping and make the pizza first.  She wasn't happy about waiting until dinner, but she finally relented.  So here is TerraDactyl putting her pizza together.  

TerraDactyl was not great at spreading the toppings out.  Also, She ate a ton of olives and pineapple while working on the pizza.  Good thing we had way more than we needed.  

She was actually pretty good about not making a mess.  We should probably be doing more cooking together.  She ate two pieces of pizza that first night.  But to be honest, I think she liked making the pizza more than eating it.  I think I've eaten more of the pizza at this point than she has.  So maybe we'll just make regular pizzas for me with dairy cheese if she just wants to make them and not eat them...

One thing that's been interesting about TerraDactyl learning to talk, is hearing the things we say reflected back at us.  TerraDactyl will use a word of phrase and I'll just be like "that's totally weird, where did she pick that up" and then a day or so later I'll realize that I (or DH) say it all the time.  

Things like:  

"Riley is freaking out" - that one is me.  And I say it a lot because Riley is a very active dog.   And he does freak out a lot.  

"Probably" - this one cracks me up, because she says it SOOOO much.  Like all the time.  For everything.  Sometimes multiple times in the same sentence.  She picked this one up from DH.  He responds to a lot of her questions/observations with a probably in there somewhere.  

"Close call" - this is me again.  I say that when she nearly falls or runs into something, or sometimes it's a bit sarcastic.  But she hasn't really figured out how to use it.  Sometimes she'll just stick it in a conversation.  And it just cracks me up.  Especially when she adds the "Phew" before the "close call".

"Ask nicely".  This is more of a parrot situation.  I'll ask her to "ask nicely" meaning I want her to adjust her tone and add a "please".  But she just responds (in a great tone) "ask nicely" straight back.  It's pretty funny. 

And then there is "geen" or maybe "ging".  I have no idea what it means.  It's definitely not green.  But I have been called a geen, so I'm hoping it's nothing too bad.  

It's also pretty neat now that she can answer questions and give us missing information.  Like, when we notice her pants are wet so she's clearly had an accident.  I can ask "where were you when you peed?" and she's pretty good about giving me a specific location, so I can make sure I don't step in it while I'm on my way to clean it up.  We don't have accidents every day anymore, thankfully.  But mostly, our success rate depends upon me reminding her regularly to take a potty break.  

Here's a video of TerraDactyl going crazy with the pineapple on the pizza:

And here's a demonstration of TerraDactyl's recitation abilities.  She can't read yet, but she's got several books pretty much memorized.  Dr. Seuss' Marvin K Mooney, Will You Please Go Now, is one of them.  It took me a while to think about taking a video while she was reading this to me, so I've just got the last page.  But she totally nailed it.