Journal Excerpt

She's into this copycat thing lately, which while amusing is sometimes counterproductive. It’s hard to get much sweeping done with her around, because she insists on doing it herself, massaging the floor with the broom with one hand while dragging the dustpan after her with the other. When she gets tired she sets the dustpan on the floor and sits down in it.

My constant allergies are finally catching up to me because she’s taken on pretending to blow her nose. She takes about five tissues out of the box, carefully wipes her nose and mouth with each one, then stuffs them all back in succession.

Unfortunately she caught us feeding the cats some deli meat once, and now she has a minor obsession with feeding everything anything. She offers the cats milk from her sippy cup, pieces of food from their bowl. She offers her stuffed toys and dolls anything she happens to be eating; if I make “mm-mm” sounds she considers that satisfactory and stuffs the food back into her mouth.

She loves to play her toy piano, but only if there is music sheet out. She insists on having the sheets open and pauses in her playing to turn the pages every now and then.

She has picked up on our diaper-changing routine. Today she said “dap-dah,” her word for diaper (and poop and fart), and I looked over and there she was lying on her back with her legs up, a clean diaper clutched in one hand and a packet of wipes in the other. I kid you not. I peeked into her diaper expecting to find nothing but lo and behold there was some poop! There is hope for teaching her to change her own diapers yet.