Pieces of the wolf and random things

Soooo... my mom and I are clearly not on the same page about what we read to Daisy (right, Gommy)? To illustrate: Daisy asked me to read "The Three Little Pigs" to her last night. I carefully edited the story to omit the demise of the first two pigs, and then at the end, when the wolf comes down the chimney and lands in the third pig's pot, I said something about how the wolf went home and the pig enjoyed a nice dinner. Daisy: "What's that?" (pointing at the pig's plate) Me: "That's the pig's nice dinner." Daisy: "Are those pieces of the wolf?"

At that moment I realized Daisy's Gommy (my mom) had been telling her a more *accurate* version of the story. Another case came up tonight when I (unfortunately) was reading her "Snow White." (I think she is too young for these stories, but I'll just go ahead and blame Gommy again--she brought the book and now Daisy can't get enough of it.) I started to edit the Snow White story from the beginning, saying "lips as red as cherries" instead of "red as blood." Daisy interrupted me: "What about the part where she pricks her finger?" !!! This kid is too much--really. Her memory is dead on. If she's heard something once, believe me, she remembers it and wants you to do it again the same exact way next time. You can't get away with anything. I think she has Mark's phenomenal memory. To give another quick example, today she suddenly brought up Lulu's red balloon birthday party, which was almost a year ago. She remembers little details from things that happened that long ago and will bring them up.

The cutest thing, though, is a recent development with Daisy: her favorite story in this unfortunate book is "Peter Pan," but she doesn't really want to hear the story. She wants you to flip to a certain page, where Pan is looking straight out of the book, and she TALKS to him. This started a couple nights ago and has been going ever since. "Peter Pan, I live in a house. And even I have paintings on my wall. That is a painting of Daisy when I was a baby and my mama. And even I have a light on my ceiling. And even my mama takes me on the bus to get ice cream. And even my Dada does pushups. He is very strong!" (That is a verbatim transcript, but it goes on and on and on like that, with Daisy telling Peter Pan everything about herself in a running monologue--and most of the sentences beginning "and even I.")

Two random conversations from this evening with Daisy to close this random post.

Daisy: What does Elise dream about?
Me: I don't know--maybe about her Big Wheel and how much fun she has riding it.
Daisy: Probably she dreams about my eyes.

I honestly don't know where she got that. Then, the last thing: this evening, after Dada had put on her nighttime pullup and pajamas and read her a story, Daisy came running into the room to get me to read her stories, as I always do. She came right up to me and said, "Mama, I had fun today at our new swimming class." It sounds like such a little thing, but it was so grown-up, so thoughtful, that it felt truly different. Usually, she'll answer if I ask her if something was fun, and sometimes she brings up something we did during the day, or a few days ago, or something she wants to do. But somehow, this felt different. Maybe I am projecting, but it felt like she wanted me to know she had enjoyed this new thing we had tried together, because she knew I was wondering about that.

I was going to stop, but I'll just add that the swimming class was fun today, although I'm a bit worried that some of the activities are too scary and will bring some stress to the experience. Daisy loooooooves being in the pool, but she just wants to "swim" around with me and do the more low-key activities (jumping off the wall or off the "magic carpet" into Mama's arms). She was afraid to run down the magic carpet and jump off, and she was afraid to do the water slide. She clung to me and shouted, "No, no, no." I don't want to pressure her because I want this to be fun and I want her to have a positive feeling about being in the water. She had a big smile on her face during the free swim with me and did not want to get out of the pool. I hope I can build on the positives, then, and not have to worry too much about whether she's willing to do all the stuff the other kids are doing.