How to break your mother's heart

After being put to bed, yell plaintively and melodramatically from your crib, "Oh, where is my mama? I can't find my mama!"

Also effective: cry pleadingly, "Mama, Daisy wants to hold your hand! Oh, Mama! Daisy wants to lie down wif you!" [Note to self: the "f" in "wif" is key for ultimate sympathy points.]

I managed to ignore her and she went to sleep about half an hour ago. But really, this child isn't making it easy. I wish we could go back to the days when she just SCREAMED from her crib. This "Mama" business makes it soooo much harder.

On another note, she is such a funny talker these days that I just wish I could capture it. She has really gotten into reading her books aloud, and will tell me sometimes, "Daisy wants to read it" when I offer to read to her. She will sit on my lap and recite books to me. Today as she read _Lost and Found_, I was amazed by how accurate her memory was. I heard her say, "The boy was delighted. The penguin said nothing"--glanced at the page--and that was exactly what it said. And so went most of the pages. She'd say, "The boy checked in at the Lost and Found Office. The man said 'no no no.'" Etc. It was pretty much like listening to a normal person read a book to you. Well, pretty much. It's quite amazing to me. She has dozens of books more or less memorized, page for page, and she reads them with great expression in her voice, making her voice go up an octave when she's doing dialogue, giving all the right inflections to the different moods in the plot (joy, sorrow, excitement, whatever). When she starts reading, she says the title of the book authoritatively and clears her throat. Then, she clears her throat and makes this sort of lip-smacking noise that I think my mom and I both make in between each page. It is VERY dramatic. She finishes a book, then starts it right over again-- and can go on like this for a long, long time.

Another cute thing she's been doing is "reading" grownup books, mine and Mark's. I guess she is interested in them because she sees us with them. So, she'll pick up my copy of Jane Austen's _Sense and Sensibility_ and actually sit with it for a long time, turning pages, even though she has no idea what it says. It goes like this. "Oh! There's a little 'a.' There's a little 'n.'" (Turns page.) "Oh! There's a little 'o'!" (Turns page.) "Ohhhh! There's a little 'b'!" And so on. Must be fascinating reading for her. Also--this really cracks me up-- if she skips a page, she says, "Uh-oh, I skipped a page!" and she has to go back. Like her entire reading of random letters on each page would be totally messed up if she skipped a page.

Daisy says, "Daisy wants to hold Mama," to mean she wants me to hold HER, and she has other pronoun problems. Other funny things she says that I know I'll want to remember: "Oh no! The footie is stuck!" (like if I'm trying to put her PJ bottoms on or pull her pant leg down). Now, here is an odd one; she also says, "Oh no! The footie is not too stuck!" to mean it IS "too stuck." That's a formation she uses fairly often, negating something when she actually means to assert it-- like, "It's not too hot," to mean it IS too hot. She also does this funny dialogue-with-herself thing when she wants something. It goes like this: "Want to nurse? Okay. Let's nurse." Never waiting for my answer, of course. (Yes, I need to wean; I know I know I know. She is making it hard.)

This is a good age. She says hilarious things. She sings. She dances. She marches. She has a head of fat brown curls. She has enormous doe eyes and unbelievably long lashes and pouty lips. She's got a round juicy belly and squeezable little pudgy legs and sometimes the kissy monster HAS to kiss her until she screams, but it is her own fault for going around being so cute. I can't believe she is EVER going to have temper tantrums and make her mother cry. It won't happen, right, mothers of three-year-olds? :-)

PS
Anyone bothering to pore over the minutiae of this blog will note that my last post's prediction came true: I posted that she was going to bed without a fuss, and that very night she started up with the plaintive, "Oh Mamas" again. Told ya I'd jinx myself!!!