More adventures with the 4-year-old
So Chickpea’s latest “trick” has been acting up any time we praise her baby brother as he starts to walk. And by “starts,” I mean lets go of the table for a few seconds and lifts his foot up, then falls over with a big, proud smile on his face. Yeah, he’s in no hurry. And I’m loving it.
Anyway, when either of us sit down to get Garbanzo to take a few steps, she suddenly starts acting like a baby (pretending to walk wobbily, too), says “Look at me!” as she flips somersaults, or announces that she can now jump really high, and to stop looking at her brother and watch her jump.
She’s never really been jealous of Garbanzo until now. It’s wild to witness, actually. She’s in the early stages of reading, so whenever she tries to intercept her brother’s praises, we remind her that this is his special thing he’s learning right now, and that she’s learning to read. And then we heap on the praises as she reads out two-letter blends.
But the funny phrase she’s saying right now is “What in the world?!” BUT – she says it in the wrong part of the sentence. For example:
Her dad starts a silly dance in the living room.
- CHICK: Dad, what are you doing in the world?
Garbanzo babbles and puts his bowl on his head during dinner.
- CHICK: Garbanzo, what are you doing in the world?
I’m in the kitchen starting dinner.
- CHICK: Mom, what are you making in the world?
It changes the meaning completely.
And then finally, today we were making lunch, and she was wearing her apron as she was stirring tomato soup:
- CHICK: Oops. Mom, I got a dot com on my apron.
- ME: A what?
- CHICK: A dot com. Look. (I look – there’s a tiny speck of tomato soup on her apron.)
posted: 09 March 25
under: Add new tag, chickisms, chickpea, family
Very cute misphrase
I’ve got three (2,4,6) and the older two (the girls) are competitive to the point of shedding tears over things like who gets to say grace at each meal and wash their hands first! (they practically tackle each other on the way to the bathroom). However, the other 75% of the time they are best friends and even quite good at resolving their many disputes (usually involving sharing or playing pretend characters).
I tried to comment on this post on your other blog:
http://simplemom.net/productivity-quality-down-time-they-go-hand-in-hand/
…but I kept getting an error message (about a code that wasn’t showing up), so here’s what I wanted to say:
Great post! You mentioned that you are an “idealist” and either an INTJ or ENTJ. The NT type is actually the “Rational,” whereas the NF is the “Idealist.” Even in a non-MBTI (Myers-Briggs) personality type analysis, that label would most likely refer to someone with a feeling preference, since heart over head is what characterizes idealism.
I’m a a certified MBTI practitioner, so I’m always curious about people’s types. Your intuiting and judging preferences are very clear from your blog, but the other two preferences (introversion/extraversion & thinking/feeling) are harder to determine (probably because they have to do with how you get your energy and how you make decisions, neither of which come up in this blog as much as ideas and planning!). Have you taken the actual MBTI or just the clones online? My guess is that you’re either an INTJ or INFJ (that’s me).
I’ve actually taken the official test several times (work-related, mostly). And I actually consistently come up as an E, though over the years, it’s decreased in its extreme. Last time, I was barely an E.
I go back and forth with the F and T, but typically, I’m a T. The N I’m always consistently strong. And the J showed up after I became a mama – maybe that’s because I have to be, I don’t know. When I first took the test, not too long after high school graduation, I was a hard-core P. I was very fly by the seat of my pants.
So… all this to say – last time I took the official test, I was an ENTJ.
That actually makes a lot of sense because the ENTJ women I’ve encountered are the most high achieving, with both excellent people skills and a great business acumen. Female ENTJs are less common (since about 60% of women have a feeling preference and supposedly only 25% of the population has an intuiting preference). A lot of pastors are ENTJs also.
Family background and circumstances are known to affect the outcome of the instrument, which is why it’s recommended to both self-select your type (before taking it) and work with a practitioner to arrive at a best fit type. I’m not trying to sell myself here (in fact, I rarely use my skill for pay–more to talk to groups and help friends)–it’s just that I commonly hear from people that either they’re “borderline” or that they’ve changed, when the premise of the MBTI is that our preferences are inborn. We all operate with all 8 functions (which is what the preferences expand into), just in a different order, and we develop them throughout our lives, so healthy people tend to be pretty fluid in using whatever function(s) the situation calls for.
Sorry for the mini personality rant–I can’t help myself–I’ve got a talk coming up this week (tying this in with the conclusion of our Grace-Based Parenting women’s study), so it’s on the brain!