Tongue Twist

Witnessed just now:

Dad: "Sydney, what's in your mouth?"

Sydney: "Just, go away." Waves Daddy away.

Dad: "Sydney. What's in your mouth? Is that plastic?"

Sydney: "Stop talking."

Dad: "Sydney, don't put plastic in your mouth."

Sydney: "It's not IN my mouth. It's ON my mouth."

Dad: "Well don't put it on your mouth."

Sydney: "But it's my extra tongue!"

Dad: "What...?"

Sydney: "I have to put it on my mouth, it's my extra tongue!"

Dad: "....Can't you pretend your extra tongue is somewhere else?"

Sydney: "NOOOOOOO!"

Dad: "Well, I'm sorry, but its dirty so you can't do that."

Sydney: "What if I wash it off?"

Dad: "...okay."

What a three year old has to go through just to have an extra tongue!

Mekkers

Daddy and Sydney were sitting on the floor looking at a picture of the solar system. I expect the concept of other planets is a little out of her reach but she was gamely trying.



"See?" Daddy said, pointing at the various colorful spheres, "there's Mars and Venus, Earth, Saturn, Neptune..."



"..and Scotland!" Sydney exclaimed excitedly.



My maternal grandmother was Scottish. She did say she'd travelled a long way to get to America.

Just as Sydney is gamely trying to understand her world, we're gamely trying to keep up with her. The other day we told her it was time to go to bed when she told us she wanted to play a "short mekkers."

"What's 'mekkers?'" we asked.

"It's a game," Sydney said, and proceeded to bend over with her head on the floor and one leg in the air. This was how you played mekkers. Easy enough.

Yesterday I found my husband lying on the ground in the driveway while Sydney piled hay on top of him.

"What are you guys doing?" I asked.

My husband looked up at me wearily. "We're playing a long mekkers."

Oh. Mekkers is that kind of game. I see.

Y Knots

Things have gotten a little more complicated these days with the introduction of a new arrival. We have suddenly become the show stopper at every venue; restaurants, shoppng plazas, libraries--wherever we ventured so happily as a threesome before has become a veritable clan of look-alikes, albeit in various stages of maturity.

This explains, in part, why there is a stick taped to our sliding glass door and a plastic bag attached to one of our dining room chairs.

And it's the only explanation you're likely to get.

Meanwhile, Sydney has reacted to her new status by becoming Three with a capital T, conveniently ignoring requests she would rather not deal with, refusing foods she used to eat with gusto, and bursting into uncontrollable tears at the merest misstep by her over-tired parents, and instead of punctuating every response with a rhetorical why? has progressed into the more challenging question, why not?

e.g.

"Syd, please don't put dirt into the baby's bouncy seat..."

"Why not??"

It's all fun and games, here.

Mermaid Salad

Being three apparently has a lot of advantages I hadn't thought of before. We were at the dinner table the other day eating ham, which Mommy and Daddy were enjoying with a spot of mustard and a little horseradish, when Sydney insisted that she also needed to have some mustard and horseradish. Leaning on our past experiences with this child we were pretty sure that she didn't like either, and told her so.

"Three year olds like mustard," she said. And they do. They like horseradish too, it turns out. Plain, with no ham to interfere.

So my little gourmand came into the kitchen with her toy elephant last night explaining that she and the elephant were hungry and they wanted to go to a restaurant.

"Okay," I said, playing the role of the waiter, "what do you and the elephant want?"

"I want a peanut butter and samwich," she said, clearly, "and the elephant wants mermaid salad."

Don't blink, I thought, and said, "Does he want a mermaid salad sandwich or just mermaid salad?"

"Just mermaid salad, please."

So Sydney had a peanut butter sandwich and the elephant ate his mermaid salad.

A little while later she came up to me and asked: "Excuse me, how do you make mermaid salad?"

I have no idea. "First," I said confidently, "you catch some mermaids."

"Yeah?"

"Then you cut the tails off."

"Why?"

"Because that's the part you eat. Then you cook them for 35 minutes, and you put them in a big bowl."

"Yeah?"

"And then you add mayonnaise, onions, celery, pepper and salt." Essentially I have just subsituted mermaid for tuna. Yummy.

"Oh!" Sydney said, "My elephant is still hungry. Can he have some more?" And off she went with more mermaid salad for her elephant.

But what have I done? Is she going to traumatize some little girl with a Little Mermaid t-shirt by making yum yum noises at it? Is she going to ask her pre-school teachers if they can make mermaid salad? Have I altered my daughter's experience with half-fish, half-human mythological creatures for life? Or is she really just skipping all that and admitting that all they may be good for is a substitute for tuna salad?

I wish I was three... I'd probably know the answer.

Quod Erat Demonstrandum

Sydney's powers of reasoning have sky-rocketed over the past few weeks. Today she reasoned that, when asked what her grandmother said and her grandmother replied, "I didn't say anything," that it must mean that her grandmother's mouth was stuck up with glue. There are a few gaps in this reasoning, to be sure, but it's not bad for a first try.

When I was in college I took a logic course with the specific goal of being able to reason nonsense in such a fashion that no one could argue with me. This same desire may have been passed down to my daughter who the other day very sanely reasoned that soap was made of rubber. Observe:

1. Wild rice is yummy.
2. It is yummy because it tastes good and also because it has a neat texture.
3. The texture of wild rice is slippery, crunchy and a little rubbery.
4. Soap is slippery.
5. Therefore, soap is made out of rubber.

Obviously.

Third Time a Charm

Now fully versed in English and with a long memory, Sydney got exactly what she wanted for her birthday: a chocolate cake, vanilla frosting and chocolate (no, wait, I want vanilla) ice cream. She also had: three red balloons, a single candle with a three on it, a bunch of daffodils, a hat and a sweater, a veterinary kit, a craft table, play doh, a book of Curious George, a bubble maker, and a guitar.

Not a bad haul for a three year old.

She also definitely has the birthday, now-I'm-a-year-older concept down. This morning she told me she was still three. And that next year, she would be sixty.

From three to sixty in one year? The way time speeds up around here, I don't doubt it.

Building the Girl

Since we live on a farm, Sydney is exposed to probably more adventures than your average three year old, just by being at home. Last year she acquired a toy chainsaw and she can frequently be seen working along side Daddy or Mommy, cutting up sticks, grass, snow banks or whatever else gets in the way. Ever since Daddy had an accident, she's also realized the thing can be dangerous; consequently whenever she gets any kind of cut or scratch and a random stranger makes the mistake of asking her how she got it, she will bravely tell them she did it with a chainsaw.

Despite this statement we have not yet been visited by child welfare officers.

At any rate our pint sized farmer is coming along fine. While playing in the sandbox at her preschool the other day, she announced to the boys bunched along the sides that she was digging a trench.

"A trench??" the boys asked, increduously. They'd never dug anything but holes. "What's a trench?"

"A trench," Sydney explained, "Can be a big hole or a small hole. I'm digging a big hole."

I think the boys have some catching up to do, if they want to dig trenches with Sydney.

Manners

A few days ago I asked Sydney if I could have a piece of her cookie. She must have been in a good mood, since she answered, "Yes, you may sure can!" And she even broke off a sizable piece and gave it to me.

I fully realize that she picks up these phrases and mannerisms from the people around her (mostly me and my husband), but they are both amazingly endearing and hilariously funny coming out of the mouth of a not-quite three-year-old. And you never know when you might encounter them. Yesterday evening at dinner, my husband offered Sydney a cucumber slice, to which she waved her hand at him and said, "No, thank you for the offer, though."

A little while later, he offered her a bite of fish, to which she replied:

"BLECCCHHH!!!"

So at least we know she's still not-quite three and not some old soul stuck in a child's body.

A Day in the Life of a Sydney

Things are going well, and Sydney is cheerful, rambunctious and mischievous. Suddenly she removes both her socks and her sweater and throw them away, declaring that she is hot and doesn't want to wear them.

It is about 5 degrees Farenheit outside, and while warmer inside, it is definitely not tank top weather, which aside from her jeans is now all that she has on.

"Syd," I say, in my calmest, most reasonable voice, "You have to wear your sweater."

"I don't want to wear my sweater!" she says, still happily bouncing around.

"Yes, I know, but it's cold out, so you have to."

"Noooooo!" she says, and we're clearly going downhill from here.

"Syd-"

"I'm going to hide!" she says, and darts into the kitchen.

I try the Ultimatum as I follow her into the kitchen with the discarded sweater in my hand. "I'm going to count to three, and when I get to three, I'm going to put it on for you!" Counting is bad enough, but the threat of someone doing something Sydney knows how to do herself is to be avoided at all costs. I'm sure I have her now. But she's not moving, so I start my count.

"One...."

"NO! Don't count!!" she says, and gets up, always a good sign. I come closer and she comes closer, we've almost gotten Project Sweater under control.

"Two..." I say, and she darts past me, runs back the way she came, goes into the bathroom and closes the door.

My husband, who has been trying to cook dinner, now enters the fray.

"Sydney, you have to do what Mommy says."

"I don't want to!" comes the muffled, determined voice, and she leans against the bathroom door to make sure I don't come in.

"Fine," he says. "Stay in the bathroom then."

Well, that works, because she comes out, but still won't stand still long enough to wear the sweater. Now both parents are engaged, and we surround her from both sides. Desperate, cornered, she does the only honorable thing. She grabs the sweater from my hands, rushes to the gate which blocks the dining room, and throws it over the gate into the darkness beyond. Then she glares at us, defiant, and collapses into a protest heap on the floor. "I...don't..want..to...wear! the! Sweat! er!!"

Fortunately, she still only weighs about 25 pounds, so its still relatively easy to pick her up at this point, carry her upstairs, and deposit her into her room to think it over. She cries and cries and then finally falls silent.

"Mommy?" she says, in her calmest, most reasonable voice. "I'm ready to wear my sweater now." I go into the room, we put on the sweater, and we hug to make up.

Later, she protests that she already blew her nose and doesn't need to do it again, and makes her point clear by hiding the tissue under the dog's bed. We let it run. What's a little snot in the scheme of things?

Gondolas in Space

It was New Year's Eve, and we'd seen a circus, a taiko performance, some fireworks and a bunch of Loony Tunes cartoons, all part of First Night in Burlington, VT. Sydney had been going strong all day but there we were, napless, trying to eat dinner in a small Korean restaurant. One of the cartoons had made a big impression on her.

"I want to go in a rocket ship with Mommy and Bugs Bunny!" she said, restlessly toying with a dumpling.

"Okay!" I said, glad to have some kind of distraction that did not involve throwing food. "First, we need a countdown!" And I counted down from 10 to 1. Sydney was obviously anticipating the next maneuver, so with great gusto I lifted her out of her chair and made rocket noises at the same time.

Instead of giggling happily, she burst into hysterical tears.

"NO!" she cried between hiccups, "I wanted to go in a real one!" And she collapsed onto my shoulder with great, shuddering sobs.

Which is just as well, since I was suddenly overcome with hysterical laughter, even over my horror at unintentionally bursting her bubble.

Welcome to reality, kid.

Gently as I could, I explained that we couldn't go in a real one, at least not right now, and that she perhaps might like to practice first? Maybe go to astronaut school? Maybe someday when she was older and had gone to astronaut school, she could go in a real one. A few moments later she collapsed into a puddle on my lap and fell deeply asleep. So started Sydney's 2010.

We have these heartbreaking moments of disappointment more frequently now, as Sydney realizes more and more that the whole world is not actually revolving around her, that things can't always happen right now, that even fun things come to an end. We try to tread the fine line of not giving her false hope and also not breaking her spirit, and sometime we succeed, and sometimes we don't. It depends on the day, or maybe just the moment.

At any rate it's certainly not all bad. Today I came home to be greeted by an obviously excited child who couldn't wait to tell me about her day.

"We ate lunch in a gondola!!" she cried.

It's not a spaceship, but maybe it's just as good.

Navigating Christmas

It sounds fun and easy, doesn't it? Who doesn't have fond memories of waking up on Christmas morning, only to find that Santa really did come and he left you presents that you may have asked him for and some you only thought of? Who doesn't remember the excitement of new toys which last for, oh a few hours at least? Who wouldn't want to recreate those moments for their own offspring? Really, how hard can it be?

Okay so first off, remember now that you're carrying on a deception based on a conglomeration of Swedish, German and Macy Department store's traditions in which a fat, jolly man who usually lives on the North Pole flies around the world delivering presents to every single (good) child in a red and white suit with flying reindeer in a single night. And now you're trying to explain to a two and a half year old that this man comes down your chimney, fills an empty stocking and leaves presents, but somehow doesn't do it until she's asleep. "Why?" she asks, the typical two year old. At one point, early on, she surprised me and asked, "Is Santa Claus real?"

I said yes. I outright lied. I just didn't expect the question before the age of say, eight.

We got past the Santa Claus hurdle, only to be thrown into the melee of what the heck to buy the two year old who has everything and is used to "shopping" at the town's "Swap Shop" (i.e. the "dump"). Everything in the world contains batteries, educational DVDs and flashing lights. Everything else is toxic or made for ages 3 and up. What would she really play with? The traditional way of gathering info--asking your child what they asked Santa for-- wasn't yielding any information, since Sydney asked Santa for a Christmas Tree.

Stuffing the stocking became an issue; I hadn't bought enough stuffing. Recalling my stocking days I finally figured out why my stockings always contained fruit; they filled up the space nicely. Then it came time to wrap the presents... and wrap, and wrap, and wrap... it was 10:30 before we were done. Exhausted, we went to bed.

Predictably, when Sydney came downstairs to encounter the newly stuffed stocking and the presents under the tree, she didn't ask about Santa. She said, "Did somebody come here?"

All in all, the rest of the day went well, and Sydney was delighted with everything, most notably a Black & Decker toolset complete with hard hat, safety vest and goggles (goo goo goggles, she calls them). This morning she asked tentatively if her new presents were still here, as if she expected them to disappear with the Day. I told her they were and she went downstairs happily.

The Christmas Mystery; solved. Now, if only someone had told me that fingerpaints were so messy.... but that's a different story.

Have Toilet Seat, Will Travel

One of the unspoken secrets of parenthood is that toddlers are a source of unremitting hilarity.

Of course, you can't laugh at them, you'd give them a complex. Even when I laugh at one of Sydney's silly antics, something she is doing silly on purpose, she still asks me, "why are you laughing?" To laugh at her when she endeavors to offer her own serious opinion, or when she is stomping around in the kitchen in her "dancing dress" to Elvis Costello's "Red Shoes", or when she suddenly bursts into tears and declares she doesn't want the Christmas Tree because it isn't Christmas yet, would surely be classified as child abuse, so we spend alot of time with our hands over our mouths or with our backs turned, trying to hold in a serious case of the giggles.

And now we've got toilet humor. Sorry, folks.

Early in Sydney's potty training career, she was feeling confident enough one day to do the whole operation by herself. So without telling her father, she climbed up the stairs, went into the bathroom, took off her diaper, and climbed up onto the big potty, only to fall straight through the hole and ended up screaming her head off, whereupon Daddy found her half submerged, her shirt wet and her little arms trying to keep her butt out of the water. Talk about trying not to laugh in the face of serious crisis.

This incident has marked Sydney, so even though she is perfectly toilet trained she is afraid of the Toilet, i.e. the thing that grown ups sit on. She still insists that Daddy teach her to pee standing up, a request I am continuously vacillating on, on the one hand telling her that Daddy will teach her when she's six (an age I've placed a lot of arbitrary milestones on) and on the other telling her that girls pee sitting down. She countered the last one the other day by responding that she wants to be a boy.

"um," I said.

It's a frequent response of mine, these days. I mean really. What is the correct parental guidance response to a request for an early toddler sex change?

In any event, to combat the problem of the Big Evil Toilet, the only kind they ever have in shopping malls, gas stations, or restaurants, we've started carrying with us in place of the diaper bag a toddler's toilet seat.

So there I am, in a small Co-op with my hilarious sidekick, who is constantly chatting up a storm, running around the aisles, and generally making herself (and me) conspicuous to all the other shoppers, when she announces at the top of her lungs that she needs to poop. We get out the bag with the potty seat in it, rush to the bathroom, and get set up, whereupon she announces that actually she doesn't need to go. So we undo the operation and go back to our half filled shopping cart, where five minutes later she announces once again that she needs to poop. So we run back to the bathroom and this time we get something for our troubles. Thoroughly frazzled by now, I go back to my shopping, but Sydney is done, and she runs around and around screeching delightedly. I decide that I'd best be done too, so we go to the register and unload the wagon. Sydney puts on her Helpful Toddler Hat and decides she can push the wagon back to where we got it from, and starts pushing it in a random direction, heading toward a display of bananas. I'm in the middle of paying. "Honey," I say, in that distracted parental way, trying to keep one eye on her and one eye on the debit machine, "please be careful where you're going."

Sydney stops, stares at me, and then in her loudest, most incredulous voice, cries, "What!??"

Whereupon the cashier, the bagger, and half the store burst out laughing.

That's Sydney, my little comedian.

Toiletry

Saturday began like any other day. Sydney went down for her "nap"-- otherwise known as her private two hour sing-a-long, at around 2, and at around 4:30 I came back into the room to find her sitting on the bottom of the bed with a huge grin on her face.

"I didn't sleep!" was the first excited thing she said to me, and then the real kicker, "I'm not going to wear diapers anymore because I'm a big girl!"

"Really!" I said, conveniently responding to both statements. We dutifully got out of the diaper and into underwear (recycled and much too big), and when downstairs I asked her to repeat the last part so that Daddy could hear.

"I didn't sleep!" she said.

"No, the other part," I said.

We decided to take her at her word, though we were worried, for instance, when she and I went out for an hour to hike about looking for Christmas Trees, or when we went out for a third of the day to go shopping, or what would happen when she napped.

So far, she's done it almost perfectly.

So in honor of Sydney's new journey into the world of Toilets, you should read this link. Maybe Sydney knew it was momentous day after all.

Pop, Pop, and Away

We went to town today to gather a few items and also to buy a gift for a friend of Sydney's, just turning three. Sydney's favorite place to buy gifts; The Party Store.

When you go to the Party Store, you're really there to buy balloons. So we explained that one balloon would go to Sydney, the other, to her friend.

"Okay," Sydney said, and then promptly picked out a bright, cheery orange one for herself, and a somber black one for the birthday boy.

We intervened and picked out a purple Happy Birthday balloon, and handed them out to the clerk to be filled, whereupon the balloon became about the size of Sydney and three times as wide.

"Hon," my husband said to me, "Do you think we can fit that into the car?"

We then belatedly learned from the clerk that a balloon of that size would probably deflate in 4 or 5 hours. The birthday party would be the next day.

"Fortunately," the future salesman exclaimed, "for 35 cents extra we can add a substance called Hi Float, which will make the balloon last for 24 to 36 hours!"

We had already committed ourselves to the balloon. We agreed to fill two balloons with Hi Float.

Six dollars later, we were out of the store and trying to stuff them into the back of the car when one of the balloons popped suddenly. It was the bright cheery orange one.

"Uh oh," we muttered to each other. "What should we do?"

"Syd," my husband said a few seconds later, "your balloon popped."

"Oh," she said, disinterested. She was busy looking at the pavement.

"Is that okay?" he persisted.

"Yes," she said. She was on to something else entirely.

Relieved, we stuffed the remaining balloon into the back of the car and headed to our next errand, a drugstore. Somehow, Sydney found herself in the party section of that store (is party animalism genetic?) and shouted for joy. "Bayyoons!!" she cried, and promptly pulled down a mylar helium contraption with Dora the Explorer on it.

We were now 9 dollars into helium, ribbon, mylar and rubber.

We began to wend our way home with the new balloon, the birthday balloon and our various other errands stuffed into our small Prius, when we heard another explosion in the back. The big, Hi Float Happy Birthday balloon was gone.

Two balloons down. At least we still had Dora.

Who, true to her name, decided to set out Exploring when I opened the trunk during our next stop to change a diaper. Neither Sydney nor I witnessed Dora's silent escape from the car, but she was nowhere to be found when we got home.

Fortunately Sydney had bought a wooden secondhand train. "Your balloon is gone," I explained to her as we went into the house.

"Oh," she said, rolling her train on the floor.

The train was 2 dollars. And Sydney was happy. And that was all that really mattered.

Happy Halloween

I don't think that Sydney really understood the question. After all, the past two Halloweens she's been around for, her language skills were either undeveloped or largely absent. But in any,event, whenever we asked her, she stuck with her story.

We saw several ladybugs, a spider, a couple of Batmen, one Boba Fett, a million disney princesses, a few witches, a devil, and an infant dressed up as a carrot. There were also a few nondescript costumes, mostly teenagers, dressed up in that Just Give Me the Candy kind of way. It was a warm, though windy, Halloween, and everybody seemed to be having a good time.

Oh, what did Sydney want to be for Halloween?

Spinach.

Out In the World

Parenting is, on the one hand, a matter of subjective opinion, and everyone should have the right to raise their children as they see fit. On the other hand, being a parent is like being under a giant diplomatic microscope; a UN of patriotic, vitriolic, sympathetic procreators whose country of child is necessarily the center of the universe. Enter; the beach.

Sydney, myself, my husband, and his sister and her husband, all met up at the ocean front a few weekends ago. Although the beach in question has miles of relatively uninhabited areas in which to camp for the day, we uncharacteristically chose the most busy spot; next to the pier, the playground and the sandy beach. Sydney was ready to play, you see.

All around us were people and children of varying stages of life and varying stages of beach dress; from the almost-nothing string bikini to the full veil of the modest Muslim. They were also from all different walks and views of life, as evidenced in the many encounters we had.

It's these encounters with perfect strangers, whose children interact with mine, which is the sticky point where diplomacy might break down. Sydney met up with a girl named Katherine, a cute princess of a three year old who seemed friendly enough until Sydney picked up some seaweed.

"Eww!" Katherine said, "I don't want it!!" Katherine's parents had obviously taught Katherine the dangers of the wild outdoors. Sydney, on the other hand, has never seen a slimy green thing she didn't like.

Ignoring the outburst, Sydney gave it to me. "Whatz dis?" she asked.

"Seaweed," I said.

While Katherine was still inching back closer to her new friend, Sydney asked, curiously, "Can I eat it?"

Seriously. What could make a mother prouder?

Later, as I was enjoying a nice dive in the cold Atlantic, I noticed a recently dead but mostly intact crab floating in the waves. I showed it to my sister in law, and then noticed that Sydney was still engaged with Katherine. "I'm going to go freak Katherine out," I said, and hurried to shore to cause diplomatic havoc.

Later, I felt a little bad. Was I dooming my daughter to a life without friends? But on the other hand, she has plenty of friends. She immediately named her new crab friend "Jeebo." Who needs a Katherine when you have a crab?

Y?

Sydney, you can't eat dirt. Don't eat dirt.

Why?

Because it isn't good for you.

Why?

Because it isn't food.

Why?

Because dirt isn't food.

Why?

Because it isn't.

Why?

Just because.

Why?

I don't know.

.....

Why?

Sorting Reality from Fiction

"A boy hit his head with a bottle!" Sydney declared, a few days ago, apropos of nothing, "but he okay kapuz his friend pick him up."

"Oh, I see," I said, trying to process a) what she was talking about and b) where she'd witnessed such an event. These days I have to navigate carefully through these statements to get at what she's really talking about. If I ask directly, she'll reply, "Stop talking to me!" and then she'll end the conversation and I'll be no wiser. So I try to sort it out in a round about way.

"Did you see this on the computer?" Maybe it was a Sesame Street scene?

"No," she said.

I tried a different tactic. "What was the boy wearing?"

"A jacket and a coat," she said, emphatically, and then she moved on to another subject. "You a BOY!! How you doin? It's so nice to see you!!"

Maybe she dreamt it. Maybe it was part of a conversation. Maybe she made it up.

Maybe, I don't want to know.

Kapuz

I make up stories and I make up games and I immediately regret it because whatever I invent we'll play for days on end. Take, for instance, Whappowong, which is when you suddenly flop down on the grass with your legs in the air and then you drop the legs suddenly--wong-- which is very funny and also, it turns out, funny on the twenty or ninetieth try.

I made up a talking hand puppet when Sydney was 9 or 10 months old called Tickle Monster. Then I made up another one called Cousin Tickle Monster. Some days, Sydney will only talk to Tickle Monster or Cousin Tickle Monster and not to me. Somehow she trusts them, even though they often tickle her instead of answering questions. "Hi Tickle Monster! How you doin'?" she'll say, looking directly at my curled up hand. "I'm good, Syd, how are you?" I'll say in my normal non-Tickle-Monster voice. "NO TALK! Just Tickle Monster!" she'll tell me. Sigh. I used to be so much more than just a hand.

Sydney's favorite joke is to call me a boy. "You a BOY!!" she'll yell joyfully. Recently she's been told that actually her mother is a woman. "You a WOMAN!!" she'll yell at her father, generally in a particularly crowded grocery store.

She's starting to rationalize things too. The other day she told me that she couldn't sit on the potty "kapuz it pinch me."

"It.. what?"

"Kapuz it pinch me!"

"Kapuz?"

"You don' unnerstann!" she said, sorrowfully, an expression I've used often to let her know that I'm trying to figure out what she's saying, but don't quite get it yet.

"Say it again, I'll understand this time," I said, helpfully, hoping it was true.

"No potty, kapuz it pinch me!" she said, impatiently.

"OH! Because it pinched you! I see..." it had pinched her the other day, accidentally. I let her know I fixed the potty and all was well, and we went on to our customary "I don't half to be brave" which means that she won't get a "soap bath" tonight and won't have to endure the agony of getting her hair washed.

Kapuz we all know how bad that is. Just, you know, kapuz.

I See France

Sydney hasn't seen her favorite aunt for a month. But she loves to talk to her on the phone and tell her all the important things going on; usually those things are right in front of her, so the conversation is a little disjointed. Today, however, she proudly announced to her aunt:

"I'm wearing blue underwear!"

She was, too.