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!"