One of Genevieve’s major sources of frustration with The World is that so few people in it can figure out what the hell she’s saying. Julia’s probably best at this arduous, high stakes task. Shannon is not far behind, but I lag well back. I counted it as a triumph a few weeks ago that I succeeded in getting Genevieve to repeat something more than twice before staging one of her freakouts.
Tonight came what I hope is another breakthrough. Vivi jogged up to me, jumped up and down excitedly and patted her stomach, then yelled, “Doo-doo nammy! Doo-doo nammy! Doo-doo nammy!” I had no idea what she was talking about. “Is it something you want to do?” “Nooooo.” “Is it something you want me to get?” “Nooooo!” “Is it playing?” “NOOO!” As I guessed, Shannon came upstairs, and after a few more wrong, wrong, wrong tries, she hit it: “Tickle your tummy! ‘Doo-doo nammy’ means ‘Tickle my tummy!'” Genevieve looked up at me with the same look you might give a dense dog that just figured out that you had not, in fact, thrown the ball, then threw herself down on the floor, shrieking “Yeaaaaaaaah! “Doo-doo nammy!”
She very much enjoyed the tickling.
[post edited to reflect how it all actually went down]
Ahem! Did you forget? I was the one who came upstairs and eventually, after a minute or two of incorrect guesses, had the aha moment: “tickle tummy! tickle tummy! she’s saying tickle tummy!”