Red-Letter Days

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"It Wasn't Me..."

We're officially in the land of three-word sentences. Favorite phrases around here these days are "Edith do it," "Edith get it," and "Edith hold it." I like "Edith get it," as it frequently saves me steps. "Edith hold it" seems disproportionately applied to things I would rather she not hold, like the bottle of liquid infant Motrin with the unreliably childproof cap.

"Edith do it" is her favorite, with different connotations in the present and past tenses. In the present, it's usually an upbeat expression of determination to attempt something herself. For example, I'm wiping down her high chair tray after a meal and she announces, "Edith do it!" as she takes the sponge from my hand.

In the past tense? Well, it was turned around on me earlier this week. We were walking Bismarck in the woods and came across a frozen puddle.

"Look, Edith," I exclaimed. "It's ice!"

I stepped onto the puddle to show her. It creaked and then cracked.

Edith looked up at me with big eyes and said solemnly, "Mommy doed it."

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Last Child in the Woods

Edith's increasing association of specific locations with specific events is amazing us. It must be part of the toddler love for order. Most mornings she wants to "Run!" the same five or six squares of the sidewalk on the walk to school. In the midst of winter, she still asks for "Beh-wies" when we pass the corner where a wild plant with some unknown type of berries bloomed last summer and fall.

But she was frustrated the other day when deer didn't appear in the same place on Farber Road that they had on her walk with Dad the day before. She was sure that that was where they belonged. She kept calling for them, until I suggested we go walking down into the woods to see if we could find them. I was surprised when she kept quiet and focused on spying deer for a good fifteen minutes as we circled through the woods below our apartment complex. We didn't find them, though.

I thought it was probably a good lesson, that nature isn't at one's beck and call but that you have to be quiet and observant, and sometimes you get lucky and sometimes you don't. But a good lesson doesn't quiet a toddler. Edith continued to ask, "Deehs? Deehs?" Finally I said that they must be sleeping. She accepted that. "Deehs. Sleeping. Shhhh...." And she bent over and put her head down on the ground.

Since this outing and the one mentioned above were actually one and the same, her account to Dad when we got home was, "Deehs. Sleeping. Shhh. Ice. Mommy doed it." It's a good thing she had an interpreter with her.

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Ah, Idioms

One more mention of that walk: When Edith asked for deer I told her, "You have to keep your eyes out." Upon which she thrust her forhead forward and started blinking and squinting in the funniest manner.

***

"I Leave You Alone with Her for Ten Minutes..."

On the toddler continuum of trouble-making, I've learned that Edith is not much of a meddler with things that are off-limits. We still have most of the childproofing devices we bought sitting in their original packaging, because Edith never tried to drink from the toilet or open the china cabinet or any of the other things that some of her classmates figured out in about five minutes once they could walk.

But don't count on consistency of character in toddler. Sunday morning I was the one to walk Bismarck before church. As usual we were running late, so it was an abbreviated outing, just around the playground and back. You have to respect kids' efficiency in forbidden activities. When I came back in Tom confessed, "We've had a call to Poison Control since you left."

"What?" I asked, disbelieving. "I left the two of you shaving together ten minutes ago."

Done shaving, Edith evidently left the bathroom for the living room, where she snagged the corner of a bag of art supplies protruding from the top of a bookshelf and pulled it down. She then removed the plastic from a new bottle of green acrylic paint, and not unlike Alice in Wonderland, began to drink the mysterious liquid. Tom found her with a kelly-green moustache a minute or so later.

My only question: Why would a kid who conscientiously avoids all green vegetables take so readily to green paint?

Wait! I just had a flashback to childhood. Latticework under the porch, green paint, clean toddler...Uncle Peewee, care to shed light on this one?

***

Speaking of Dogs

If you were Edith, and you had received a book of opposites illustrated with photographs of dogs, and if one page opposed a chihuahua and a German shepherd with mostly black fur but some brindle markings on his legs,

surely you, too, would conclude that the opposite of

SMALL

was

BIZ.

***

Carseat Wisdom

We were pulling into our neighborhood from an errand the other night, and I prompted, "Edith, where are we?"

And she replied, "Here."

***

"Oh Yeah? Well Mine is Better..."

I overheard my first playground-style braggadocio from Edith tonight. We were in her friend Annabeth's kitchen, where there was a photograph on the refrigerator of Annabeth on a white horse.

"Horse!" exclaimed Edith. "Neeeeeigh!"

"Yeah, that's my aunt's white horse, and I got to ride it. It's big. She has two horses and that's the biggest, and I really rode it," said Annabeth.

Edith looked at her and responded. "Edith's horse. Home. Red. Big."

I agreed that she had a red bouncy horse at home and asked if we should have Annabeth over to see it.

"Yeah!" agreed Edith. I then made the mistake of suggesting that Annabeth could ride it.

"No. Edith ride. Ambef ride white horse."

Or as I heard it in my mind,

"No [way]. [Only] Edith ride[s the beautiful red steed]. Annabeth [can] ride her [stinkin'] white horse [if she wants to]."


Annabeth did come over for the evening shortly thereafter, and I found myself thanking the stars that we did not have children eighteen months apart. (With utmost respect for those of you in the Two Under Two Club...) Between the pair of them they kept me on my toes. Or rather, on my hands and knees, clearing the trail of destruction they left in their wake.

Edith both was fascinated by the big girl and still feeling the need to assert herself over and against the guest. Like when we read books. Both girls would pick out a book and come over to have me read it aloud. Faced with two books at once, I'd tell them that we'd take turns reading one and then the other.

When I said that we'd read Annabeth's chosen book first, Edith let me get through three or four pages before announcing sweetly, "The End," as she leaned over to close the cover before Annabeth could find out that there were still more pages, then deftly stuck her chosen story on top.

But for the most part, the girls had a good time together. Even if Mom was exhausted.

***

Soul of a Bush Pilot

Tomorrow Edith will go on her second trip by airplane, to see her great-grandmother in Iowa. Last week she pointed out an airplane overhead, and I thought it was time to prepare her, so I said, "In a few days Edith will go on an airplane.'' Wow, was that exciting.

She wanted to be sure Mommy and Daddy were going, too. I confirmed that we were and told her we would be seeing Mor-mor, Uncle Peewee, and Gigi Opal on the other side. She liked all that, though she kept asking, "Mee-maw at there?" and I had to tell her that, no, Grandpa couldn't be there this time.

But the news she really resisted was the commerical jet.

I told her it would be a big airplane. She replied, "Beeg airplane? No! Lidduh airplane! Lidduh airplane!"

We've had this conversation several times since then, and Edith is still adamant about the Cessna over the 717.