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.