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.

Penguon

BC just found my little penguin figurine from the Wallace and Gromit movie The Wrong Trousers. She's ecstatic. She's introduced herself to the penguin and continued with a menu of her dinner. "I'm [BC], Penguon [which is how she pronounces penguin]. I had mac 'n' cheese Penguon. I had yogurt Penguon. I had boccy [broccoli], Penguon."

Frustrations

BC wakes up at 6:00 this morning. That is just too early, I'm sorry. So I explained to her that I would change her pants and then she would have to go back to bed. She scrunched up her face and announced, "I frustrated wif you, mommy." Yes. I made her say it twice just to be certain that's what she really said. What will she be like at 14?

I'm here!

Ahh, the amusement levels of a 20-month-old. I *think* this is it the 896th time she's run into the room I'm in gleefully repeating, "I'm here mommy! I'm here mommy! Hi Mommy! Hi Mommy! Hi Mommy! Hi Mommy! Hi Mommy!"