Bedtime prayers

I was nursing our little ADD baby upstairs while BC and Daddy read their bedtime story and prayed their prayers down in the basement by the Christmas tree, the lights of which cause the little man to forget entirely what he's supposed to be doing, i.e. nursing. I heard BC climbing the stairs and saying to her Daddy, "May I teach him prayers?" He said she could.

She then came barreling into the living room and rattled off, rapid fire, the Lord's Prayer, the Nunc Dimittis, a Hail Mary, the Apostle's Creed and the prayer to St. Michael the Archangel. There were very few stumbles, and all were delivered in an attitude of true earnestness. I told her just how proud I was and gave her a big hug.

Then Daddy took her to change her diaper and began teaching her Christ's Greater and Lesser Commandments. She could not wait to get in to the living room to teach her brother. She was a bit shaky herself, but she took her job of teaching them to him with utter seriousness.

Quite the big sister, I'd say!

Hobbits and Misfits

Daddy is finishing up The Hobbit with BC, who is thoroughly enjoying it. When I had her brother at the doctor's office today for a hideous cough and an ear infection, she and her daddy sat down to read "a little bit." Twenty-five pages later, they were mere pages from the end. She didn't want him to stop reading! But she was listening pretty intently.

During the last battle, when Bilbo is injured but has forgotten to take off his ring and no one who is hearing his cries can find him, Daddy said to BC, "Why can't people find Bilbo?"

"Because he's invisible!"

"That's right! Why is he invisible?"

"Because he's wearing his ring!"

***

Later this evening, we had one of those moments you want just to bottle so you can either laugh your tail off 3 years from now or relive them and cry.

BC was watching Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer with her daddy while I put her brother to bed. I came back to the basement where they were and she was sobbing. Absolutely sobbing. Shnuffling and crying and whimpering. I said, "What in the world happened?"

"She's crying about Rudolph," said her dad. "She feels really sorry for him."

I was gobsmacked. That had never occurred to me. In fact, I think I would've been mocked soundly if I had reacted that way as a kid.

But sure enough: When Clarice is scolded by her father for hanging about with "red-nosed reindeer," BC began to cry outright and said, "Poor Rudolph!"

My child has ten times the empathy I have. 


I will say, however, that at the end of the movie when Daddy said that he would read her A Christmas Carol on the basement couch tonight instead of in the living room, she announced, "Ok. You go upstairs and get A Christmas Carol while I stay here." Sir, yes, sir. 

Last night we attended a ceremony for my grandfather's portrait hanging at the Medina County Court of Common Pleas. It was a lovely event. Grandpa's law partner, Bob Bux, presented the portrait with some lovely words. At one point, he retold the story of Grandpa's showing up in his office and reciting, from memory, Kublai Khan, which he correctly identified as a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. BC, who was sitting on the table of the grand jury room facing her grandpa (my dad), immediately perked up and said, "He wrote Rime of the Ancient Mariner!"

She then went on to enjoy rather a large meal with her grandpa at an Italian restaurant, where they enjoyed lasagne and spumoni, two of BC's favorites.

This morning, BC has been up to her usual tricks, and has kept me hopping. She's had a head cold. I could hear her froggy little voice in her room when she woke up, saying, "Mom? Mommy? Are you there?" And then, poor thing, she started coughing. So I trotted into her room to get her up and get her moving, and she announced, "I was choking like a bat."

I was ignorant of bats' tendencies to choke.

So we changed pants, had some cuddles and then headed into the house for the day. But her brother was being naughty. Her solution was to move in, Commando style, and fix the problem. I hauled her off of him and explained that she was not in charge. "If he is doing something he's not supposed to be doing, you let Mommy discipline him."

He kept being naughty. There was a pause.

"Mommy, will you discipline him please?"

I was talking to my mom on the phone at the time and told her what BC had said. Then I heard her pipe up: "But you're not disciplining him!"

Reading Comprehension

Matt is reading The Hobbit to BC at night. I am amazed at what she understands. He is currently reading to her about the encounter between Smaug and Bilbo after Smaug has chased Bilbo and the dwarves out of his lair when they've stolen his treasure.

At one point, she says to him, "Dragons sleep in tunnels." We agreed. "And take naps in tunnels."

Hard to argue with that.

Then he starts to read about how Bilbo tries to creep past Smaug but Smaug smells him and wakes up.

"Is the dragon awake?"
"Yes, he is. He's waking up."
"Dragons don't talk, do they?"
Foolishly, we told her they do not. Then Smaug talked.
"Dragons DO talk!"
"You're right. They do."
"Is Smaug chasing him? Is he going to take him away?"
"He is. But whom is he chasing?"
"Bilbo, I fink."
"That's right. Bilbo."
"Smaug is going to take him away from the dawarves." (That is a purposeful misspelling. She says "dawarves." It's the cutest thing ever.)

[further reading]

"Has he taken him away yet?"
"No, not yet, honey. Keep listening."

[more reading]

"Is the dragon talking?"
"Yes. He is."
"He's talking to Bilbo?"

"And then there are all the others?"
"All the other what, honey?"
"The other dawarves!"
"That's right, sweetie. And where are the dwarves?"
"They're somewhere that the dragon can't find them and take them away."

I'd say she's doing okay with her reading comprehension!

Sleeping. Finally!

BC slept NINE HOURS last night!! I could get used to this! :)

Overheard from BC to her little brother:

"We're going to have a good day today! Now, no crying, no fussing, no whining . . . "

Massive meltdown upon the consequences of disobedience, which then led to a forced march to her room and the revocation of a "treat", promised upon the contingency of pleasantness and obedience. After shrieking "MOM!! MOM!!" through her keyhole she then began wailing, "I need a drink!" I assume she meant juice. I laughed heartily and responded, "YOU need a drink!?"

I did not go in to her immediately when she quit shrieking. So she resumed, and began yelling, "Where are you? Where did you go? Get yourself in here! NOW! Get me out of here!"

This is not helping her cause.

She's now muttering, a la Rainman, "I need a treat. I need a treat."

Is it horrible that I'm having trouble stifling my laughter?

Catch-up

BC has been prolific in her quotables lately.

The other day, she woke up and announced that she did not need breakfast and was not hungry. She would wait.

Within 15 minutes, she was rolling around on the floor smacking her brother and whining. I asked her what her problem was. "I'm mad because you haven't fed me." Oh, indeed. I'll get right on that.

As I was getting her breakfast, she once again began acting badly and I reminded her that her next stop was her room. She did not amend her behavior. "I've already warned you, sweetie, that you're going to your room if you can't be pleasant." She responded, "Fank you for that warning, Mommy."

Derelict though I am, I did manage to get her breakfast on the table. She polished off two whole pieces of french toast. When I noted that with no small amount of surprise, she said, "OH, I fink that's my problem."

Last night, as she played outside with Daddy, she was quite talkative. Charlie was barking at them from the house and she began channeling me: "Grrr, Charlie! That dog is something else! I'm furious with him!" Daddy then pulled out some bubbles and let her play with them. He asked if she had ever done that before. "No," she said, and then corrected herself: "There was that time with the waitress." We realized she was talking about when I was pregnant with her little brother and we went to Cracker Barrel, where the manager was wandering around with a bubble gun blowing bubbles on the porch. That was this past fall. Meaning nearly 10 months ago. She was 18 months old. That frightens me.

She followed that up with a gleeful shriek when she heard a train. "It's a freight train, Daddy!" He asked if it was Thomas the Tank Engine. "Umm, no. It's too far away. It's in Canton."

This evening we stopped at a little festival at a nearby church and BC was entirely overwhelmed by the whole thing, partly because she had fallen asleep in the backseat on our way. So we packed her back into the car and took her for ice cream instead, which was much lower key. As we shared our ice cream with her, she announced, "Don't just eat it all, people." We chuckled at her and finished our ice cream (with her help), at which point she announced, "That's all there is, Maffew. That's all there is."

King of Alfred

Matt has been reading G.K. Chesterton's poem "The Ballad of the White Horse" for his book group. It's the story of King Alfred and the Danes, who had horns on their helmets. Or so it's been said. He's shared it with BC on occasion and has read her several of the chapters, but not for a few weeks. It resulted in frustration for little BC because he would stop reading aloud in order to read the notes silently. She finally reached the point of saying, when he would pause, "Oh, is there a note? Are you done with the note?"

She wandered over to his copy of the book while he was at work today and picked it up, announcing that she would read it. She climbed up on the couch and opened the book up and I heard her saying, "And then King of Alfred and Jesus and Mary went [mumble mumble mumble]. And King of Alfred and the horns went in their houses because it's thundering and raining. But they're not scared of that." Then she would pause. And then say, "Oh, there's a note."

Story time...minus the sharing

BC was reading a Richard Scarry book while her brother sprawled on the floor and watched her. She found a blimp and used her new word for such a creature: "Is that a wump?! A wump!"

Her brother then tried to look at the book with her. She was not amused by his interest and I had to tell her to share. I heard her say, "You can look at it but you can't touch it. Because your fingers have fingerprints."

Yes that's right. We're white glove folks around here.

Who's in charge here?

BC has recently begun refusing to eat her dinner. Unless it's a corn dog or a hot dog or some other equally unhealthy and inappropriate excuse for dinner.

Tonight, I looked at her plate and said, "I am not proud of you, because you are refusing to eat your dinner."

"Mm," she responded diffidently.

Then she looked at my plate: "Are you finishing your dinner Mommy? I'm very proud of you!" Then she saw two cherry tomatoes left on my plate that I was saving for last. "Oh, you haven't finished your tomatoes, Mommy? I'm not proud of you."

Time lapse

We had blueberry pie tonight. It was pretty awesome, I have to say. The lemon was prominent. Love it. And I even made a lattice crust. Because I could. And here it is:

So we gave BC some of the pie and a touch of ice cream. She ate a bit of the pie and all of the ice cream, demanded more ice cream, and gave up on the pie when she learned that no ice cream would be forthcoming. Later in the evening I said, "You didn't care for that blueberry pie, did you?"

"No," she said. "I like peach pie."

"Oh really? When have you had peach pie?"

"Um, it was about five weeks ago, I fink."

"Really? Huh. I didn't remember that."

"Mm. Yeah. It was maybe when I was at law school."

"At *law school*" I asked, incredulously.

"Mm-hmm. There was a bug on the table and I hit the table and it went away."

"Oh. When did you go to law school?"

"Probly about four weeks ago."

My worst fears for my child are coming true. She'll be part of yet another generation of lawyers.

Oh criminy

BC has two cousins who have been visiting recently who are born gymnasts, and daredevils to boot. The eldest, whose nickname is Bean, can climb in and out of high chairs as if they were mere stairs. I've never seen anything like it.

Today, BC was trying to climb into her high chair (which she tried again later only to find herself can over teacup on the kitchen floor with her high chair on top of her) when I scolded her and told her, "No! You may not climb into your high chair. You are not Bean."

"I'm not Bean?" she said. "But Bean is the best!"

Random thoughts

Last night, as Matt was walking her around the neighborhood, she was telling him about a conversation she and I had had during the day. She said I had asked her a question, and then said, "I was unable to answer that question."

This morning at breakfast, she was demanding something (sausage or eggs or a napkin or something) and her daddy said, "That's no way to talk. How do you say it nicely?" She replied, "Pweeeeze." A few moments later she said, "Is that nicer?"

After breakfast, she was playing with her little brother's toy and hitting the button to make it play music. "I'm playing with this because it makes [my little brother] feel better." Not 10 seconds later, she walked up to her little brother and konked him in the head with it, making him cry. Apparently its soothing properties are not effective in the face of bludgeoning.

BC explains to me all about the play house at the public library.

Utter indifference

BC is in a refusing-to-nap stage, which is driving me absolutely nuts. It's a willful refusal, not an inability. She talks and talks and talks in her room until she's whipped herself up into a frenzy of giddy chatter, all the while fighting the sleep she really needs, and she ends up falling asleep at 6:30 p.m. after we've eaten dinner, and waking up at her bedtime. Needless to say, this is beyond irritating.

Today, I tried a disappointed tone with her and said, "Mommy is extremely disappointed in you that you won't take a nap." She looked me full in the face and said, "Yeah, that's maybe the problem. [pause] Can I get some milkies?"

It was a tough day for BC as a result of much frustration and screaminess from the smallest member of the family, who had a massive bellyache.

BC ordered her own dinner tonight at Cracker Barrel (or Crapper Barrel, and she calls it). After Matt got her strapped in to her high chair, for which she praised him highly and said, "I'm so proud of you," we asked her what she wanted to eat. She said she would have pancakes with booberries and sausage and milkies. We said that would be fine, but that she would need to tell the waitress herself. She said she would. The poor waitress walked up and before she could even finish saying hello, BC said, "Pancakes! With booberries!" The server very sweetly took the order, which BC competently completed with a request for "sausage" and "milkies," and then looked at us and said, "Can I take your drink orders?"

Later, as we left the restaurant, we sat in the rocking chairs for a little while as BC sat in one next to us and then ran over to the checkerboard table and carefully stacked all of the giant checkers as a nod to her OCD. We told her we needed to leave and Matt tried to pick up the car seat containing BC's little brother. BC announced, "We can just leave him here. We don't need him anymore. I want a new little brother." Perhaps a little less screaminess, Tiny One. Apparently you're on thin ice.

As a final note and recognition of her ridiculous memory, she remembered something ridiculously isolated and temporally distant today. I broke my toe about 2 months ago by running the coffee table over it as I was vacuuming. It was the second time I had broken a toe. The first time, as I had told some people two months ago, was when I was in college and fell down the dorm stairs, catching my toe on the vertical railing bars as I fell. Tonight, Matt was praying with her for his niece who was graduating from college. BC piped up, "Mommy broke her toe on a rail there." He said, "Where?" "At college."

Wow.

BC had one of her first root beer floats tonight. (The first one was not a winner, so we don't count that one.) I asked if she liked it and she replied, "I like it, my dear!"

She then looked out the window, concentrated for a moment, and then announced, "The moon might be out there. I can't figure out how the moons get out there!"

In the Service of the Queen

This morning was apparently Royalty Morning at our house.  It started off with BC's announcing that she *needed* milkies. "Get me milkies," she said. I told her she should not be demanding. She responded. "I'm not being demanding. Get me milkies. Now."

She then demanded to know what was for breakfast. I told her I was making blueberry pancakes. She responded, "Then you can get me milkies." Indeed I can.

When we sat down for breakfast it was as if we were footsoldiers. "Cut up the strawberry. I need sausage. Give me eggs. Pancakes? I can have pancakes now?" Subtle reminders about being polite were completely wasted on her. I suspect the rest of the day will follow suit.

I'm going CRAAAAAAAAZY!!

She was playing in her kitchen while I was cooking. I heard a thud and looked over my shoulder, where she was hunched over her toy basket that had obviously shifted while she was leaning on it. She was rubbing her head and looking troubled.

"Are you all right, honey?"

"Yes. I'm okay. I just hit my head a little bit."

There was a pause, then she added, "I'm just losing my flipping mind."

A fine distinction

As part of my continuing quest for the Mother of the Year Award, I left BC to finish her little bowl of yogurt from lunch so that I could run downstairs and get the groceries in from the car. (I figured the likelihood of her choking on the yogurt was significantly less than our getting food poisoning from unrefrigerated groceries.) When I came in the door downstairs, she heard it shut and immediately began shrieking at the top of her lungs, "MOM! MOM! MOMMY! MOM! MOMMY! MAMAMAMAMA!!!" I listened to her shrieks and was quickly convinced that they were not urgent and she was simply being loud and obnoxious. So I ignored her completely.

When I came upstairs, I said, "Were you screaming at Mommy?"

"No," she said. And then added softly, "I was yelling."

It never ends . . . the chatter, I mean.

So many great BC-isms today.

As she sat in her high chair (having slept through dinner after a long nap) she announced that she did not want to eat anything. I gave her the plate of casserole and broccoli and said, "Well, whenever you eat this that's fine." She responded, "Never?"

***
She saw her Daddy standing on a chair to paint the trim in the bed room.
"Are you standing on the chair all by yourself?"
"Well, honey," he replied, "I'm allowed to."
"I'm not allowed to! Not ever!"

***
She was playing with her Thomas the Tank Engine set and she had every engine hooked together (she never uses the trucks). As they made their way around the track, she narrated with "They're taking them across the wide sea . . . to faraway places."

Little pitchers!

There is a rumor that I have referred to Charlie the Dog as a jackass. I can neither confirm nor deny this rumor, though justification is entirely clear after his poor decisions regarding the consumption of dirty diapers. Be that as it may, BC heard the word *somewhere*, and has made it a part of her vocabulary. Of course.

As my mother and father drove BC home to spend the night with them, a holder of the public trust -- who shall remain unnamed -- came on the radio and was fabricating about something. Both she and he grumbled, and BC piped up from her car seat, "He's a jackass!" Mother clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle a laugh, and Dad spoke affirmingly of BC's assessment. Mom said, "We don't want to encourage this." But BC chirped, "I want to encourage it!"

The next day, she was being wheeled around the neighborhood by her father just as the substitute mailman drove up. We like him. We do not care for our regular mail person because she routinely leaves our mailbox stuffed to the brim and gaping open in the rain. The above appellation may have been applied to her as well. But when the mailman got out of the car, he bent down and waved at BC and smiled warmly. In a perfectly adult tone, BC turned around in the stroller to address her father: "He doesn't look like a jackass." Matt doesn't think the mailman heard her, and he quickly said, "You shouldn't say that!" She paused, and then said, "He's a doofus." Ah, yes. Much more politic.

The Family Curse

All my life, I grew up hearing that every crisis that occurred in our family occurred when my father was in Columbus, where he worked during the week.

"There was a bat in the living room, flying all around, and I had to figure out how to kill it because you father was in Columbus."

"The dog killed a bat that could have been rabid, and I had to take care of it because your father was in Columbus."

"Godzilla tried to crawl in the third story window and I had to figure out how to defeat him because your father was in Columbus."

The refrain became familiar, and we chuckled about it.

We have been reading "The Lady of Shalott" to BC and it has become a favorite of hers. She now knows the line, "'The curse is come upon me,' cried the Lady of Shalott." Matt is out of town this week on business. This morning, when I was in her room getting her ready for the day, she became very agitated and said, "The curse is come upon my room!" She repeated it several times, I affirmed that she was indeed saying what I thought she was saying, and I went on with my day.

Later in the day, when she was getting ready for her nap, she again was agitated and said that the curse had come upon her room. She pointed at her closet and looked at me with wide-eyed expectation. Apparently, the curse was in the closet. I pointed at everything within reach, but none of it satisfied her as constituting or containing the curse. I begin to point at things out of reach. Sure enough, one of those things was the curse. Simply identifying it was utterly insufficient. I next needed to ERADICATE it. And what was "it"? It was a small black duffel bag that contained a few books on natural birth and breastfeeding. I refuse to believe that she could possibly know those books were related to her little brother in any way. I choose instead to believe it was an entirely irrational conclusion that a black duffel bag contained an unidentified evil. After much effort, a rain of feathers from old ballet costumes stored nearby, a vacuuming frenzy to clean up the feathers, and a few frustrated exclamations, I retrieved the duffel bag. I started to put the vacuum cleaner away and realized that she was dragging the duffel bag out of her room. She was completely committed to its removal. Now. Without delay. And then she took her nap without further ado.

After some errand-running this evening, I treated myself to a Chai and brought it back to the house. Stupidly, I set it on the table where she could reach it. She was trying to take something else off the table and she knocked the Chai over and it went everywhere. On her. On the wooden table. On the beige carpet. On the couches. Everywhere. And she was a screaming mess. A hot screaming mess, you might say. Thank God she was unhurt, but what a mess!

I immediately texted my mother: "Toddler scalds herself and destroys part of the living room. And where is Matt? Wait for it . . . COLUMBUS! It's a family curse. And taking the black duffel bag out of the closet did not fix it."

In fact, it may have made it worse. I then dropped my phone into a bowl full of water.

I'm going to bed now.

Tonight was a night of much frustration. Matt is sick and I had been outside gardening for several hours this afternoon and therefore did not have anything done inside the house. Because she is a toddler and human, BC chose to take massive advantage and be as difficult as possible at dinner.

Matt ate quickly and then ran out to mow the lawn before it rains again. I was doing dishes. This was her chance to make me crazy. She sang songs and demanded more juice and argued with me and talked to the dog and did everything BUT eat her dinner. I finally sat down with her and tried to feed her dinner. She then planted her feet firmly on the table. Like a barbarian. In a manner that no doubt showed my hand and unwisely betrayed how irritated I was by her behavior, I demanded that she remove her feet. So she said, "I'll put my foot on my arm." No, you will not. You will put your foot down. "I will put my foot on my other leg." No. You. Will. Not. So then she propped her feet up on the edge of her chair next to her booster seat. I told her one more time to get her foot down off of the chair. And, upon her refusal, I lost it. I took her dinner away from her and put her in the red chair for time out.

Several hours later, when I had a chance to grab dinner, I was sitting at the table reading and eating my salad. My heel was resting on the seat of my chair and my chin was on my knee. It's inappropriate, yes, but comfortable. I hear her in the other room chatting cheerily about anything and everything, and I hear the chatter approaching the kitchen: "Charlie, don't do that. Don't eat my animal crackers. [She had no animal crackers, just for the record.] I will take Madeline and Thomas outside to the garden. Inside the fence. I will take them outside. Oh, hi Mommy. [Dead stop. Wide eyes. Pointing at my foot.] Put that down. Get that off the chair."

I stand corrected.

Walker Percy . . . kind of

She's a great fan of Thomas the Tank Engine. For those who don't know, there is a little green engine called Percy who appears in many of the Thomas stories.

As Matt was driving her to her Pop Pops's house the other night, he was telling her what he has been reading, as he often does. (We wonder why she converses as she does.) He said, "I've been reading a book by Walker Percy."

Her face lit up. "Percy! Percy and Thomas?"

"Well, no, honey," he replied. "Walker Percy was a southern agrarian author and --"

"Percy and Thomas! And Mavis! And Salty!"

And so begins the juvenilization of Walker Percy.

Expostulate, Forrest! Expostulate!

This was a day of philosophizing, Forrest Gump style.

This morning, she was starting to be a little stinky and I asked if she had a dirty didie. She replied, "Yes, I have a dirty didie. Sometimes this happens." Thank you, Forrest.

Later, as she was waiting for Daddy to come in from mowing the lawn and I was clearly being inattentive to her, she flopped herself across the coffee table and said, "Tell me what the truth is." I could think of nothing to say on the spot other than, "God is love." She looked a bit skeptical, then said, "Tell me what the other truth is."

She about melted my heart today as she learned to play with older kids who also happened to be boys. They were swinging around on a Little Tykes slide cube and playing with a Little Tykes car. She was so interested in what they were doing, but she was just too little and she didn't know them at all, though they knew each other. To say that she was an outsider in their games is to put way too fine a point on it. I don't know if watching something like that touches other moms' hearts, but it sure broke mine. I just wanted to run over and help her get involved, but I knew that wouldn't do any good.

As I watched, one of them literally gave her a foot to the face entirely accidentally. She didn't cry. She stepped back and looked up at what he was doing, taking it all in and not fighting at all.

But the best part was when the boys were playing on the slide cube and she thought she'd take her turn with the car. The boys then decided (probably upon seeing her with the car, as kids will do) that they wanted to play with the car and they ran over and shoved her away from it and got in themselves. She looked at them without any anger in her voice and said, "Aren't we sharing?"

I love this child more than life itself.

Our little Pooh Bear

Monkey was sitting on the couch reading the giant A.A. Milne collection and her Daddy came in from putting away dishes.

"What are you doing, Monkey?"

I replied that she was reading Pooh Bear. Daddy said, "You're a Pooh Bear, Monkey!"

"No! I am not a Pooh Bear! THIS [pointing to an illustration of Pooh Bear] is Pooh Bear."

"You're a Pooh Bear!" he repeated.

"I am NOT a Pooh Bear. THIS is Pooh Bear."

"You're a Pooh Bear!" he repeated again.

"I AM NOT A POOH BEAR! THIS is a Pooh Bear. Go back in the kitchen, Daddy!"

Eine Kleine Narcissism

She repeatedly asked to watch the video of herself saying the Jabberwocky. Again. And again. And again.

She now knows how to say, "No narcissism here."

Don't throw me in dat dere Briar Patch!

Today she directly disobeyed me by doing exactly the opposite of what I had told her to do. She knows that we will first give her an opportunity to fix the problem, and then we will put her in her crib until she agrees to acknowledge what she did and to fix the problem. I began the first step of the process, which triggered a tantrum, and then I started into the "you're going to have to go into your crib" part. She knew it was coming, and she headed me off at the pass:

"Can I go in my crib?"

It was like talking to Brer Rabbit.

I asked her to repeat herself, which she did, and then I told her she could not go into her crib. Instead, she had to go to the red chair and sit in it until she could tell me what she did and agree to fix it. She sat down in the chair and said, "Can Ellie look out the window?" No, you must sit there. What did you do wrong, Ellie? "I don't remember." I asked again. "No, I'm not going to tell you what I did wrong. I'm just going to sit and think about it."

It's getting harder and harder to keep a straight face when I discipline her.

Exotic farm

As she was playing with her Fisher Price farm playset, she began to list off the animals inside: "Horsey, cow, zebra . . ." I (quite reasonably, I thought) asked her, "What's a zebra doing in your farm?" "He's looking out the window." Ah. I see.

Later, I texted her father to tell him the above and he replied that he missed her. So I thought I would have her say something I could text back to him. I said, "What do you want to say to Daddy?" And she responded with the line he repeats to her at every meal (and every other opportunity) daily: "It's always fun to be neat and clean!" He was touched.

Nursing and mushrooms

Monkey has had some good ones today. I'll just list them briefly because otherwise I'll miss the next one while I'm busy typing!

This morning, as her little brother was expressing little interest in nursing (a rare occasion indeed), Monkey asked if he was eating. She watched for a moment and, when he didn't eat, she laughed and said "Oh, he's not hungry." Suddenly, he lunged at me like a python, mouth open, and Monkey said, "Oh! He latched on! Good!"

We had an incident today with a young man at Bible study who is about Monkey's age. He's a sweet little guy but he was having some sharing issues today. Kids will be kids. Monkey had my car keys and was playing with the flashlight on the key chain. The little boy took an interest in it and proceeded to grasp Monkey's wrist firmly and remove the car keys rather forcefully so that he could play with the flashlight. She looked at him for a moment, and then stepped toward me and said, "Could you give them to my mommy?" No shrieking, no "gimme," no "mine!" Just, "Could you give them to my mommy?" I about melted.

Tonight she is playing with her little counting playset that consists of cans of vegetables, each containing a certain number of plastic vegetables between one and ten. She had the number 7 container, which is mushrooms, and she was trying to put them into another container. (This is what she does for fun: she moves things from one container to another.) When they popped out of the box into which she was trying to place them, she became exasperated and said, "Go in the box, mushrooms. Go in the box now. You mushrooms, go in the box." They must have been listening because soon all of them were gathered neatly into her box. Good mushrooms!

Movie night

So Gramma and Grampa are taking the Monkey for the night this weekend. I'm pretty excited about it because it means that, though we'll have her little brother with us, we will have a chance to have a date night without a toddler. Matt was putting a gift card given to us as a Christmas gift into his wallet in preparation (Yes, it's Thursday, and we're already prepping for Saturday's date night, which should not necessarily be an indication of our eagerness) and I exclaimed, "Hooray! Date night!" Upon hearing me, the Monkey said, "Hooray! Date night!" Daddy explained that she would be having a date night with her grandparents, to which she said, "Hooray! I will watch movies with Gramma and Grampa! Probly, um, maybe, Curious George?"

Good to know she's already putting together her itinerary for her trip. :)

Muscrap

So it's kind of a long story how we started calling pork roast "muskrat," which then became "muskrap" in Monkey's vocabulary. It's all traceable to a pork tenderloin that I made that, in its finished state, looked a bit like it had a head and little legs and a tail. Matt peered into the pan and said, "I'm sure it's good, but that looks a lot like a muskrat." At dinner, Monkey was refusing to eat and Matt told her that she had to eat, and that it was muskrat, which was a delicacy and she would really like it if she tried it. She announced that she would not eat "muskrap." But then she tasted it and finished it all.

We had "muskrap" again last weekend. But, on leftover night, Monkey once again was refusing to eat it without a full complement of cranberry sauce. In fact, she announced that she would like simply to have the cranberry sauce. No muskrap was contemplated. Daddy told her, as he so often does, that everyone knows that you can't have cranberry without eating your muskrap. She refused. So he got out the cranberry sauce and said, "Okay, Monkey. Are you ready?" She peered at the cranberry sauce, leaned toward it from her high chair, and said, "I'm not ready for muskrap."

We did, in fact, get her to eat it. Quite a bit of it, actually. But it involved a healthy serving of cranberry sauce. In the process, Matt tried to feed her a piece of broccoli sans cranberry. We knew we'd done wrong when she announced, "The thing is, you have to feed me cranberry with the bockies."

I feel as if I'm talking to an 80-year-old trapped in tiny footy pajamas.