Tom picked him up on an afternoon shopping trip to Bed, Bath, and Beyond for some Thanksgiving prep supplies. Pie-bird is designed to sit in the middle of a pie and release steam. To Abby, however, he is her newest, most-favoritest toy, and it was love at first sight.
What's really special about Pie-bird, however, is that he instigated a breakthrough in Abby's grammar development. She finally mastered the use of the pronoun "my." She's had her, him, she, he, and it down for awhile, but my, your, you, and I have always confused her. And it's no wonder. In an attempt to simplify our communication, and to drive home clearly the connection between the titles of Daddy and Mommy in relation to Tom and myself, we spent several months speaking in the third person. In fact, we are both still struggling to break this habit, for Abby's sake, though it has been easier said than done, interestingly enough.
Thus, Abby usually avoids pronouns altogether when speaking of possessives, favoring the use of the third person. In certain circumstances, she simply uses her pronouns wrong. For instance, when she wants a book read to her, she says, "Read-yu?" (Which I believe is an attempt to say "Read to you").
Today, however, when Tom brought her home from the store, prompted her to show me what new toy she had received ("Pie-bird!"), and asked her whose it was, Abby beamed, "My pie-bird!"
Unfortunately, Abby kept trying to gnaw on poor Mr. Pie-bird, and I began to get concerned, because I wasn't sure if the porcelain figurine was hard enough to cause her to crack or chip a tooth. When she put it down for a moment and walked away, I snatched it up and hid it.
About five minutes later, Abby noticed the omission, and began looking around for her new friend, saying, "Where'sa pie-bird?" over and over again. I felt badly, but, hoping that I could avoid having to take it away again, I pretended not to hear, and hoped for the best. My tactic appeared to work. Abby focused on pie-bird for a minute or so, and then moved on, unconcernedly.
Later, at dinnertime, I told Tom of the incident indirectly, relaying how Abby had been intoning, "Where'sa blank blank?" and how sad I found the whole thing to be.
Abby is much smarter than I give her credit for, however, and a spark of understanding suddenly lit up in her eyes. "Where'sa pie-bird?" she questioned. Tom and I looked at each other, astonished. "Whose pie-bird?" Tom asked.
"Abby's- MY pie-bird!" she said, defiantly.
***
By the by, I haven't forgotten about Raspberry this week. My regularly scheduled Raspberry post got delayed due to the fact that I actually managed to take Michael's "month" pictures on time, and wanted to show them off that day. I had initially intended to do the Raspberry post a day late (today), but I have my monthly appointment tomorrow, so I figured I'd wait until after that, and plus, today was Pie-bird day. I thought his story warranted a contemporary post.
I'll end with a picture I took in the midst of my flurry of photography yesterday. It's definitely up there with my other all-time favorite Abby pictures. I can't say why exactly. I think it just captures her so well, as she is now.
My Abby-monkey genius-girl.
