In order to enjoy the blustery cold weather in St Louis, we decided to go for 30+ minute walk around the Loop on the way to lunch at what we heard was a fantastic Ethiopian restaurant.
Unfortunately the restaurant was no longer there.
Luckily there was a sign on the sidewalk that listed all the restaurants that
were still open in the area.
So, while Michael read the sign, Tovina and I, at Tovina's very speedy (re: not speedy) pace, walked on ahead. Unbeknown to me, T and I came upon a parking lot that used part of the sidewalk as a driveway. I only realized it when a car gave a bit of a beep to warn us they were planning on turning. Realizing that I not only did not have a hold of Tovina, but that she was even a couple of steps in front of me - almost in front of the car - I yelled, "STOP!"
Tovina giggled and ran... in front of the car. By no stretch of the imagination would I consider that stopping.
The drive was luckily paying a lot of attention and had stopped her car.
I caught the little miscreant, thankfully waved at the car, and gave a huge relieved sigh. I also realized that, rather than being deliberately rebellious, Tovina had no idea what "stop" meant. She seemed to think it was some cool new game which likely involved "catch" one of her other favorite games these days that also uses a lot of yelling and giggling.
hmmm.....
Since I was not willing to carry her for the next 20 minutes, to say nothing of the fact that she wasn't about to let me, how exactly does one teach a child to "stop" in less than 2 minutes?
We could just use "no" which tends to make her stop whatever she is doing, but it can have some unfortunate side effects.
Instead we followed her lead and turned it into a slightly more focused game. See, Tovina recently learned about "run" and is a big fan. So together, heading down the sidewalk much to the amusement of passersby, we ran ran ran ran ran and Stopped! and giggled. And then we ran ran ran ran ran ran and Stopped! and giggled.
We didn't test her new found skill at intersections, but we did keep practising over the weekend and have played the "run and stop" game a few times since getting home. We think that whole "stop" will have a much better chance of working now.
Here's the family at Devrent's valley. These wacky rock formations happen when you fill a valley with volcanic ash, toss some chunks of volcanic basalt on top, then let a million years of rain erode the volcanic ash around the basalt chunks, leaving them suspended at the tops of scrawny tufa (calcite) towers.
Greek Christians carved over a doze
n churches out of the tufa cliffs in Göreme. They then plastered the insides of many of them and painted some elaborate imagery in a story-telling format. The artwork is about 800 years old.
We made it and met up with my side of the family and just spent an exhausting day checking out some of Istanbul's highlights. Michael has posted them to his facebook page. I'm not sure if it will work, but you can try seeing them here.
At my parent's house she sleeps in a real, honest-to-goodness wooden crib. (Actually, she sleeps in my honest-to-goodness 30+ year old crib. We believe in very serious recycling in my house.) But I have noticed something sort of uncomfortable looking about how T sleeps in the afore mentioned crib. Can you pick out what I mean?
And the big red mark in the middle of her forehead did fade within a day so no harm done.
a very serious Mari and Tovina and a very smug Pam. Pam had reason to be smug.. after all, it wasn't her glass that Tovina is blowing into.
