Between the Dark and the Daylight: Another weekend, another witticism

Okay, they're not quite witticisms yet--although Edith is fond of telling us that "Edith Harrison have joke. Funny. Ha ha ha!" Their jokes seem to be, at last count, three mystery words: fafa, pooawgy, and dunny. Edith will occasionally try one of them on us, cracking herself up. If we repeat it back to her, she cracks up, too. But when she looks to us to laugh and we don't, she feels compelled to explain that, after all, it's her joke with Harrison and they, at least, find it funny.

Much of what she says we do find funny, though. Like the increasing intonation in her speech, especially when it reflects that of her elders. Hopefully our readers up to now have been imagining all her words in a painstaking, Frankenstinian monotone, because that's how she has sounded until recently. Now, newfound variances in cadence have widened her expressive repertoire, allowing her, for example, the speculative, "Hmmmm..." whenever we ask where something is. Or, when I took her to the local nursery the other day to buy some flowers only to find the place closed, the sympathetic remark from the back seat as if I had fallen on the playground and skinned my knee, "That's too bad!"

Then there's evidence that she's inherited the family backwardness about technology (a fact of which I'm irrationally proud): When asking us to turn on The Sound of Music soundtrack, she asks either for "Puppet show white radio," meaning the white CD player in her room, or "Puppet show black radio," meaning the black box in the living room on which pictures accompany the music. She doesn't know the word television or the word computer: all electronic things that play music are radios. Proof that she is a child of the twenty-first century, however, is that when we're in the car listening to the actual radio, she doesn't understand why we can't get it to play the song she wants on command.

While every bit the limits-testing two year old in many ways, she has been surprising us by taking no for an answer on certain things, explaining, "Mommy daddy use knife. [When I] get big, [I will] use knife." Or another favorite, "Get big use dishwasher." Definitely, kid--as soon as you're tall enough to load the top rack, you can knock yourself out.

This afteroon we were watching golfers on the county course next to our house, when I told her that her Pop-pop really likes to play golf. She replied, "Get big, hit white ball at golf course at Pop-pop's." He'd be thrilled.

She presented us with a more serious conundrum regarding the right age for a certain activity when we attended her cousin Matthew's baptism this morning. On the way over we explained that we were going to Matthew and Abby's church, where the minister was going to put water on Matthew's head to baptize him. Edith hasn't been baptized herself, as Tom and I have opted for believer's baptism for her. In other words, she can choose to be baptized when she has an understanding of what it means and feels ready.

So she was musing on this intriguing thing that was going to happen to her cousin as we drove to Pennsylvania. "Water on Matthew head," she kept repeating. She was silent for awhile, reflecting. Then, "Matthew in bathtub." Last night Harrison spent the evening with us, and she and Harrison had a ball in the tub, until they got too enthusiastic about pouring cups of water over the side and were reminded several times that water had to stay in the tub. So if Matthew was going to get water dumped on his head, surely he was going to be in a tub.

Once at the church Edith remained interested in the proceedings despite, or perhaps because of, the lack of a tub (though I personally think that's the way to go for baptism, unless you have a river handy). After the service was over, we all crowded around Matthew to give him hugs. Edith told us, "Man put water Matthew's head!" She got close to Matthew to inspect his damp curls. Then she asked us, "Man put water Edith's head at our church? Please?"

We'll have to prayerfully consider whether that's a legitimate believer's baptism inquiry or not.

One thing we'd have to find out is whether tattooed toddlers are candidates for baptism. Her flower tattoo having faded away, Edith opened an early birthday present from her Boston buddy Sam this week, only to discover herself supplied with some fantastic, highly realistic lizard tattoos. She has been sporting a leopard gecko for several days now and proudly shows it off to everyone. One of her teachers wanted to know where to get such amazingly detailed, colorful animal tattoos. Visions of a lesson on amphibians taking shape in her head?

Sam also sent Edith some pink baby legwarmers to satisfy her would-be ballerina's soul. In posing for the camera, however, it was her tattooed self rather than her ballerina self whose attitude came to the fore: