Doot, doot, doot, doot, Dora!

Jane has had a fever and been sick, sad kiddo for a couple of days, worst of it being yesterday, and so to appease my child who just wanted to "lay" (on the couch) "with a blanket. and a pillow. and Lammy," we've had some Dora on. OK, a lot of Dora. Dora's impact on my child has been humorous and given me some stories to share here.


First, we'll start with Christmas. My parents have DVR and one of the first days we were there, I recorded a Dora Christmas episode. In this Dora episode and on a pillow in the entry of our building were the only places Jane had any contact or knowledge of Santa Clause. In the two weeks before Christmas, Jane watched that Dora episode about 8 times or so. Keep in mind that, to my knowledge, Jane had never seen a Dora episode before this and her primary exposure to Dora was on her pull ups. So for Christmas, we decided we didn't want Santa to get all the credit and all the focus for Christmas. We'll attribute the stocking to Santa, but for the other gifts, we wanted to keep Christ in them a bit more. I borrowed this idea from a friend, but we decided to limit the number of gifts to the number the Savior received- 3. And the kids would have seek the gifts out, like the wisemen who sought Jesus. My friend hides a different gift near a different "sign"- a star, an angel, and a manger. We decided to keep it simple and start with a star.
Christmas morning came, Jane started to get the fun of it and was excited about all the little fun things in her stocking. Then we transitioned to the looking for a star bit, she found her gifts, it was OK for a first time. About a half hour later, after Jane had a chance to look at her really cool presents that were under the star, Jane gets really excited and shouts "Thank You Dora!!!"

Not having really seen Dora and knowing how they always look for stars every episode, I didn't get the connection. But now that Dora and I are BFFs, It's even more funny.


The following events where all made possible by my sister's sweet donation of her ROKU and Netflix, which currently streams Dora.

Dora has helped Jane become more obedient. Every episode, they go on a trip to find something, and they always consult the map, and the map tells them three landmarks, in order, to get to where they need to go to do what they need to do. They repeat them over. For whatever reason, there are certain tasks Jane struggles with more than others. Putting her jammies away? no problem. Picking out a shirt to wear? got that. Getting her socks? Not so much. BUT I have since discovered if I tell her like The Map does, it gets done! (and we sing the We Did It song afterwards ;-) Sounds something like this:
"How do we get to your socks? Go down the hall, into your room, inside your sock basket. Go down the hall, into your room, inside your sock basket. Go down the hall, into your room, inside your sock basket. Say it with me! Hall, room, sock basket....repeat a few zillion times...where do we go first? Down the hall, that's right!"


Dora is teaching Jane Spanish. Turns out, the articula-tude of my toddler only extends to English.
estrellas? "estamayas"
gracias? "glah-shes"
vamanos? "vah-nee-mash"
And sometimes she makes up her own Spanish. She'll be narrating her life like she does and then say "in Spanish, that's blah-le-ka" or whatever three syllable nonsensical scat she can come up with. Her counting in English has taken the same kind of turn. Eight is "oh-che-chas."
Her Olla is pretty good, though.



And then there are the general Dora-isms:
I picked the girls up from babysitting at the gym and I was getting their coats on and I put down my purple backpack to do so. Jane pointed to it and said "Grab your backpack, let's go!"
Anytime anyone finds anything she says in her best Boots: "There it is!" And she loves to shout "we did it!"
Anything with anything resembling a pocket she calls a rainbow and puts imaginary stars in it.
Don't take anything that she is eating, playing with, looking at or is hers or she'll say "Swiper no swiping!"
And she loves to pretend a piece of paper is a map and talk about how to get to places. In the car, too, I've used it as an opportunity to teach a toddler geography of sorts. She's very interested about going to places and how we get there and what we see along the way. I can just say in my Dora voice "can you see the _______" to instantly distract her in the car.

And I get her to do almost anything for a Dora sticker.

Yes, we are enjoying our "doot, doot Dora" time. She kind of annoys Eric because everyone in the show talks so loud. But I'll take Dora over Angelina Ballerina or princesses for now.