My strange 4-year-old

1. She is slow. I don't mean slow-witted, I mean slooooooowwww. She walks sooooo slooooowwwwly. She seems to be observing everything around her and in absolutely no hurry, ever. I must be the only mother in the world who has to urge her child, "Come on! Hurry up! Walk faster!" My mom calls her "A stop-and-smell-the-roses kind of gal," and that is the perfect decription.

2. Today she said to me (and I am not making this up), "I like waiting." This was while we were standing in an extremely long line at Safeway, such a long and irritating line that I was getting impatient.

3. She also absolutely refused to eat the peanut butter cup I offered her as we were waiting until I had paid for it. I kept trying to explain to her that we were going to be waiting a long time, and I would pay as soon as we go to the front of the line, but she would not eat it-- even though I had already handed it to her. So she sat there, holding this melting peanut butter cup, for TEN MINUTES and did not take a bite until I paid for it. These are clearly her father's genes at work, not mine!

4. Along the same lines, I was reaching for my cell phone today as I was driving home and she said to me from the back seat, "Better not do that. You'll get another ticket."

5. She is so sensitive that her eyes well up with tears whenever we read anything remotely sad, like (in a book we read recently) a mother waving goodbye to her son and saying something like, "I'll see you later." THAT was so sad that she instructed me to "read it in a whisper." That cracks me up-- she often tells me to read sad parts in a quiet voice, as though that will make them less sad.

6. At the same time as she is this sensitive, delicate soul, she loves jumping all over the place, performing and making a spectacle of herself (hmmm, father's genes again?). Yesterday she asked us, "Am I famous?" I tried some equivocating answer about how she is famous to her family and friends, but she immediately followed up with, "Am I very famous?"