Last night, Libby bought the kids a cheapo tea party set at Toys R Us and they spent much of the evening playing "resternaut" (Gabe's mispronunciation that we have adopted as standard--just like Norah's "regliar" for "regular"--which I'm sure will cause him problems when he gets older and people start to make fun of him for saying the wrong word, even if it is a superior word to the original). While they were playing, they both adopted personas.
Gabe, in his typical fashion, didn't really have any character details to go along with the development of this new character. All he had was a name and a presumed backstory to fit that name. He chose Rex Awesome. Rex CAPTAIN Awesome, to be precise. The fact that his parents had the foresight to give him a middle name that would, someday, also reflect his rank representing a level of precognition Nostradamus would have been proud of. Still, a pretty great name, and I'll work on him over the next couple days to flesh out Rex's full backstory.
Norah, on the other hand, was more than willing to dream up some details to the life of her new persona. Her name is Sally Sikarsha.
The word "sikarsha" is one that Norah has used before. I have no idea where it came from, nor what it means. It's like Gabe's "setatur" word that he would say all the time but never had a real explanation for what it meant (and which he doesn't even remember anymore). She will say it from time to time, seemingly with no purpose to it. I think it's a form of "verbal fungus," like saying "um" or "uh." When there is a brief pause in the conversations she's having between a couple of her toys, it's not unusual for her to throw the word out.
Anyway, given Norah's age and understanding of international culture differences, I haven't asked her about Sally's ethnic background. Considering her first name and going only off the SOUND of the last name, I'd guess she's the child of an Indian immigrant, a second generation citizen of an English speaking country, but that is just me making assumptions based off my own limited cultural awareness. According to the Google search that I just did, the word "sikarsha" did not exist on the internet until this post. Which is a pretty impressive level of creation for an only-recently-turned four year old ("setatur" has a few other references online, though I honestly can't figure out what they are about despite clicking on a few sites).
It took a little while for Norah to decide what Sally does all day. I kept asking "What does she DO?" and Norah gave me many different responses about things that Sally did during the day, but was having a bit of a tough time coming up with what Sally was all about. "She wears clothes every day," Norah said, "Because people wear clothes." "She plays." "She likes to eat lunch." Finally, my follow-up questions "What does she dress up for" and "Who does she play with" and "Who does she eat lunch with" led Norah to decide that Sally is a stay at home mother. She has two daughters. One of them is named Maddy and the other is named Sally. I asked her if Sally the elder had named her daughter after herself, which Norah found to be a patently absurd notion. When I presented her the fact that Sally's daughter did, in fact, have the same name as her, and there was no way around the fact that she named her daughter after herself, Norah decided the name must be changed. But then she refused to come up with a new one.
Geez, I really ought to update this thing more than once a month. Looking at the pictures I've got all sorts of things that probably ought to be posted on. Ah well. I guess I'll just finish up with an update on their birthday party, which was last Saturday.
The theme this year was Pirates and Princesses and, as usual, Libby did a bang-up job of coming up with great things to entertain the kids.
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| Our zip line. Sadly, the rope that we used was nylon, and stretchy. So the kids, if someone tall pulls the thing all the way back and holds it until one of the small ones can grab it, can slide about three feet before they drag their knees on the ground. Still, a great idea. |
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| Walking the plank. There's water in the little pools underneath, which they all "fell" into quite a bit. |
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| The pirate ship in the backyard, which Libby built out of big logs almost two years ago, was the ship from which all of the pirates, with the foam swords they all made, were able to attack and pillage. |
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| The princesses (and pretty much all of the pirates) had face painting done. |
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| Here's a fun one for Norah to remember in her later years. Momma's little girl, which her wine glass full of juice. She carried it around with her for about an hour. |
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| Norah received an Easy Bake Oven for her birthday. This was her first attempt at making something in it. She made two different cakes. The plan was to stack them on top of each other to create a multi-layer cake with frosting and everything. |
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| Nailed it. |
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| And, finally, here's Norah with an "eye patch" that she found on the floor in the laundry room. It is a pad from one of Libby's bras. |
