Over on Facebook I try to share amusing moments from life with the Wee Long-Leggedy Beastie that is our daughter. Here’s the first half of 2013…
Wee Beastie: Where is the apricot? *arms out, turns around, looking all over the room* Where has it gone?
Me: Have you lost it? Where did you put it?
WB: In my mouth!
Me: You ate it?
WB: Now it is in my tummy!
Me: I guess it is!
WB: In my mouth and my tummy. It comes out the hole.
Me: What did you say? What happens to the food in your tummy?
WB, pulling up my t-shirt, pointing at my bellybutton: It comes out the hole!
—
Subsequent questioning showed absolute confidence in her theory that the food that goes in her mouth later emerges from her bellybutton.
Hearing an unpleasant wailing, Cal Greaney rushes to the Wee Beastie’s bedroom – but just before opening the door, she pauses. That’s not crying – WB’s lying in the dark pretending to be a cat.
Wee Beastie: Can you draw a square?
(I draw a square)
WB: And a star?
(I draw a star)
WB: And a moon?
(I draw a crescent moon)
WB, giving me a look: That’s not a very good moon.She is currently in her bedroom looking for books with better pictures of moons to show me where I went wrong.
Wee Beastie bedtime story – she asked me to tell a story about Mickey and Minnie not feeling well. I told her about Doctor Jiminy Cricket coming to help them. (It turned out they’d eaten too much birthday cake.) After I finished she decided the story needed a coda: “Then Doctor Cricket Pitch got back in his car and drove away.”
Me: Hey Wee Beastie, you’re dribbling.
WB: (big grin) You’re a dribble!
Me: No, _you’re_ a dribble.
WB: No, YOU’RE a dribble! Hee hee, we’re doing tricks!
On a walk with Wee Beastie, after seeing and discussing a dog.
WB: Tell it again?
Me: So if you see a dog by itself, you don’t give it a pat, because it will be a bit afraid waiting for its mummy and daddy to come back. OK?
WB: Mmm. When you see a dog by itself…
Me: Yes?
WB: watch it in the swimming pool and then it takes its togs off and gets all dry and then it goes to see its husbands!!!
Me: yes, that’s pretty much it.
Cal Greaney putting the Wee Beastie to bed, telling her nice things about herself.
CG: You are very funny, you make me laugh!
WB: You say Knock Knock?
CG: Knock knock!
WB: No, there’s no-one here.
Having animated talk with my mother while Wee Beastie prepares to play with trains. WB gently takes my hand and walks me out the door, then lets go, backtracks inside, and calmly shuts the door in my face.
Undivided attention from grandma: achieved.
(Actually i didn’t let her get away with pushing me around but I was impressed by the smoothness of her intervention.)
Somehow the Wee Beastie has ended up with 3 toothbrushes, which means brushing teeth is preceded by a lengthy period of arranging the collection and weighing up the brushes’ various merits before finally choosing which one to use.
Yesterday I decided one of them had frayed far enough, so WB carefully carried the “boy and cat” brush to the bin and dumped it inside.Last night, as we prepared to do her teeth before bed, I overheard WB with her remaining toothbrushes, holding one in each hand:
(squeaky voice) Oh where is the boy and cat one? Where is it gone?
(normal voice) said the bumblebee toothbrush.
(squeaky voice) Oh I don’t know where is it? The boy and cat one is lost!
(normal voice) said the wiggles toothbrush.
Then she put both brushes in one hand, and with the other she picked up her toothpaste tube and walked it up to the brushes.
(deeper voice) It’s okay! The boy and cat one has just gone in the rubbish that’s all!
(normal voice) said the toothpaste.I love my Wee Long-Leggedy Beastie.
Special dessert chosen by the Wee Beastie: six frozen blueberries, and a pickle.
Inspired by Morgan Jones and Janet Humphris, I just asked the Wee Beastie, “Are you a boy or a girl?”
She replied, “I aren’t.”
Case closed.
While making dinner, I hear a wail from the lounge. This is what I find.
She was wound about three revolutions deep. (Forgive me for making her wait while I took a photo.)
Cal Greaney asks a very sad Wee Beastie why I made her sit in the corner.
WB: (crying) Because I didn’t listen.
Cal: I think you should say sorry to him.
WB: (looking down) Sorry daddy.
Cal: You should look at his face and say sorry.
WB: (meeting my eyes, very sad) I’m sorry about your face daddy.
Wee Beastie carefully removes all the money from my wallet, replaces it with clothespegs. “There you are Daddy. I put pegs instead of money in case you might need some pegs.”
Wee Beastie is working on her phone technique with a toy phone. I say it’s her grandfather calling! “Will you say hello to him?”
“No. But Baby Dolly will.”
I give her the phone, and she carefully puts it to Baby Dolly’s ear. After a moment she looks at me, eyes big and innocent. “She didn’t say anything! She was just quiet.”(She didn’t want to talk to Grandy, but she eagerly had a full one-sided conversation with James the Number Five Red Engine.)