Deirdre
- Deirdre (#12 Purdy child)”/>
Age 7 as of January 2010
Deirdre is Daddy’s little girl. “It used to say that I liked playing with dolls, but no I don’t. –!” (Deirdre told me to write that.) “I like playing with the chickens, too–except that it’s wintertime.”
Here is what Deirdre says:
Now I am seven. I have lost eight teeth, and two are starting to grow in so in. I like getting new teeth. I can feel 4 of my teeth; I can feel 3 of them even though they haven’t come up yet.
I like to play with the grown-ups, but they’re always grumpy so I can’t play with them. Sometimes I tease Collin while he’s doing Warcraft, like tickling him in the armpits! Owen and Caleb I sometimes play with too. Owen likes to pretend to eat me and Caleb likes to wrestle with Owen to get to eat me instead. Lachlan, my brother is just boring sometimes, then silly, and then bugging me. Sometimes I kind of like the stuff (when he’s bugging me) he does too. My brother Teman is always, whenever he comes home, is tying up my braids in a knot. And I hate that. My brother Arlie just bugs me the right amount and be’s nice to me the right amount. (Although he lives at a different house, but he comes home the day before Saturday and then leaves to my grandma’s house on the weekend. Rundy lives at Grandma and Grandpa’s house, so that’s why Arlie goes there, to take care of Grandma and Grandpa so that Rundy can come home on the weekend.) Cadie’s who I like playing with and talking to. Titi’s my oldest sister. Then comes Cadie, and then me!
(Okay, I’ll tell you what I’m actually like: talking all the time!(and smiling)) 
Waah, I can’t play with the chickens, it’s wintertime–it’s too cold out! There’s one chicken that’s so dumb that she always be’s nice to me. And I call her Blackbeard. That same chicken used to peck out my eyeballs! (Not really peck out my eyeballs, she just always tried to. But now she doesn’t do that.) And whenever I want Blackbeard to jump on my back, I just bend down, and she just hups right on my back! But I shouldn’t really do that because my brother Evan who feeds the chickens, then she always jumps on his back and he doesn’t like that. Fireflame, a chicken who’s a goofy chicken who always stands still and stares, died of something–I don’t know what. That’s the one that I was holding in the picture. Fireflame I liked feeding out of my hands, but there’s only ONE reason why I didn’t: whenever you got her some feed out of your hands, she’d get a hold of your hand under the feed, and tug, and the feed would spill, and she would keep tugging and tugging and tugging until I made her stop.
Age 6 as of January 2009
Written in 2007:
I like to play outside if it’s a sunny day. I sometimes go outside if it’s not sunny. I play by myself, sometimes play with the boys. I play games with the boys and with myself, sometimes.
When I’m sad or something, I play with my toys. What I play with when I’m sad or something, I play with Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella and other stuff. They’re tiny little dolls that you can slip on their plastic stuff, and slip off. Slip on, and slip off. I play with them quietly, I just whisper stuff, so that peoples won’t hear me, but, I just kind of like to play alone. Titi made me my piggy—of course, Titi’s my sister! I like the piggy billions trillions zillion gillions. The piggy is a fuzzy stuffed animal that I have tons of beautiful dresses for her, and she has two blankets that aren’t really her blankets but I just call- them – her – blankets. I found them in my bin one day. So I decided they were Piggy’s little blankets. Of course, since there’s two piggies, I named her Rose.
Cadie is my other sister—and—she is writing this for me, because I don’t know how to write yet. But some I know to read and write.
One day Mom went on a airplane to visit garden clubs. I missed her tons. When Mom was gone we talked to her on the telephone—heh heh! She brushes out my hair, I don’t like the knots. Mom reads me ‘Merican Girl stories, I can’t tell you which ones I’m on because it will keep on changing!
Today me and Collin were being nice to each other. Well he doesn’t usually be nice to me but today he was teaching me how to juggle.
I’m tired of listening to “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” because always Owen picks that song when Mom puts the boys to bed and always I’m not asleep yet. Grrr.
Bur-bur-BROOM! Mom and Dad went grocery shopping today. They do it every weekend. My brother Arlie comes on weekends, too. And on the other weekend Rundy comes! Who’s my other brother. But I have lots of brothers. More brothers than girls, eh?
I sing a song of French. It went off of my French tape onto my Silly Songs CD! It’s called “Alouette”.
I was pretending to be a construction yesterday [said in a very deep voice]. A construction guy. We were just on a game, which was turning into a different game!
I wrapped a jump rope around the wooden beam in our house to hold up a pretend sign.
My favorite food is, pizza for my birthday, and pie in the face! Not really, just pie. Pie in the face cause it’s – just – being – silly.
(Dictated with prompts from Cadie 11/10/2007, age 5)
Here are some other “dictations” that I think I solicited from her earlier on to post, but forgot to:
3/12/2006 (Age almost 4)
Hi, I’m Deirdre. My name is Deirdre Jael Purdy, but Lach-Lach calls me Jell-O. I like to play with Elizabeth Gaige. I like to play with Owen and Justin and Caleb. I like everything, not garlics or peppers or onions though. I like cottage cheese toastie and cottage cheese. My favorite dessert is chocolate. My next best is doughnuts, with it cooked in a pan. [I’m not sure what she means by that. I didn’t think she ever had doughnuts.] I had doughnuts a lo-o-o-ng time [ago]. My stuffed animal dog is named Doggy-Doggy. I like to play with babies the most. Real babies and pretend babies. Baby Isaiah’s a baby, and the other doll that’s hard. [She has a doll named Baby Isaiah after a real baby.] The one that is pink is the only one that’s a baby, and the other one’s just a doll.
I don’t like it when Titi brushes my hair. I only like the part when Titi brushes my hair with a brush. ‘Cause combs are too hard, getting out the knots. I don’t like my bed so much, because sometimes it doesn’t feel good.
I likes hugses from Owen. I like playing with Justin when he brings me outside. I like going outside sometimes, playing outside with Owen and Caleb and Justin. And Evan, too. I like sizzling everybody. Titi and Lach-Lach and Rundy–they sizzle me. Rundy sizzles me when he comes back on a bike ride, I don’t like it.['Sizzling' is a family tradition of rubbing your cold hands onto someone else.]
I like Millie and Annika.
I like to play zoo game. We pretend that we’re animals. You make animal noises, you don’t even talk. I got to be the zoo trainer once. It was fun. You unlock the cage and they go away and stuff, you train them.
I like to go outside and have fun. I like to run around. I just like to run, run, run, run.
My favorite supper is spaghetti and meatballs.
“By Deirdre with help from Cadie”
11/6/2005 (Age 3)
I had an idea for making lunch, and now it went away…I wonder where it went!
Where’s my Lion King CD that I used to play, always played it?
Always used to wonder where that Lion King went, [if it went] to Mom’s computer!
Always just wanted to play it at Mom’s caputer. I found it, ’cause I just wanted to play it.
10-18-2005 (Age 3)
Justy got into Pinball [computer game] for me. I played it for a little while, and I thought it was too boring. I did cothering [coloring]. In Paint. I like KidPix though. I did cothering in that too. When you get out it’s better, but I still like it. [I asked it why it was better when you get out. She said "'Cause it's boring." I asked her what games weren't boring.] Zoo game is fun to play. It’s fun to play with Owen and Caleb and me. You feed aminals and figure out who’s the zoo trainer. You eat your food. And I pretend I’m a crocodile. My favorite things that I pretend I am is a baby chick. Just a baby chick. Just that it’s Owen’s cute things, that I like it too! [Owen--particularly when he was younger--likes/liked baby chicks because they are so cute.]
6/16/2005 (Age 3) “I went to da Okeefe reunion. I juggled, and I didn’t know how to. I played with Elizabeth. Oh, just a silly game that I don’t know. I was playing that car game. We go in the car, and we started driving. And I said, “No, don’t go fast.” (Who was going fast?) Oh, just you guys. You! And Elizabeth! [Ed: It was a game with the little cousins where we were on top of a play fort with a slide, pretending to be driving cars. 3-year old cousin Elizabeth thought it was funny when we made our car noises accelerate to the "going really fast" pitch, but it amused Deirdre to tell us not to go fast.] We said, “A fire was in there”. We went to da library. [Imaginary library.]
A different black goat did that really loud, so I plugged my ears. And I thought it was weawy, weawy woud. Christian, he didn’t like the sheeps. He went too.” [Ed: The youngest cousins got taken to a sheep farm. In a picture taken of them, all of the cousins are holding their noses--probably for the sake of the picture--while Deirdre is covering her ears.]
6/24/05 (Age 3) “I like to slide on the slide with Caleb. We play bouncy games. I bounced on the slide. And I slided down. I did it fast. I fly-ded a kite. It was doing Owen really truly. [Owen was the one flying the kite.]
Owen hugs me. I don’t like it.”