Mostly pictures, mostly about Lucy

Her language, both spoken and receptive, grows by leaps and bounds these days. She understands some “if… then…” statements, can follow instructions. In the car, she talks about all her buddies at daycare. If she doesn’t want something she says, “Doan wannit!” She knows her body parts, and which clothes go on them. Blue Hat, Green Hat is a favorite and she reads it on high alert, waiting for me to start asking her about where the sockies go, and where the pants go, etc. Her favorite Sesame Street character is Grover, aka GO-wa, and the books concerning same must be read in Grover voice.

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If you are grossed out by barf, this is not your cute toddler anecdote:

Last night, we had a salad, and Lucy’s version is always a deconstructed one, little piles of the ingredients she approves of on her chair tray.

Her preferences are predictable, and the pile of croutons always disappears first, as she shoves them hand over fist into her gaping maw. Unsurprisingly, there is a limit to how much food she can stuff in there, and every so often, it backfires and she has to spit stuff back out because there’s not enough room for actual chewing.

Last night, she was more determined than usual to cram in All Of The Food and managed to choke herself badly enough that she gagged and threw up a little — into the hand with which she had just been holding her croutons. Before Jim or I could react, she just jammed it all — croutons, throw-up, etc. — back into her mouth and kept on chewing.

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We are in the market to hire someone as a spotter. That child thinks she is Spiderman. She will try to pull herself up, by her toes and fingers, onto high things, and she is fast about it.

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Eliza has made a pulley to go with her zipline. Sometimes, she explained, the animals don’t want to go back and forth; they’d prefer to go up and down.

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This is Lucy’s current favorite shirt.

The only bona-fide temper tantrum she has thrown so far at daycare was the day they tried to make her wear a sweater over Bunny. Bunny was originally Eliza’s shirt, and then it spent a few years in storage before I dug it out for Lucy, some or all of which may account for the fact that Bunny’s fuzz is wearing a bit thin in spots. I do not know what we are going to do if it all wears off before she relinquishes the shirt. Perhaps I shall have to start collecting Jim’s shaved-off stubble in the sink every day.

 

Other sartorial concerns center around the fact that she is outgrowing a number of her favorite shirts. Her little pot belly sticks pretty far out of her princess shirt, especially when she wears the beloved kitty pants.

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The girls and I had a Saturday to ourselves recently and we ended up at one of our favorite Chinese food places. Eliza had vegetable mushu, and ohmygod I have this big kid who casually assembles her mushu and sips her tea and chats and eats at a restaurant without turning it into an extreme sport.

 

And then there’s this one. I got us a scallion pancake. Lucy took a few bites and declared, “Pizza! MINE!”

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Eliza and Lucy were in the bath together and of course they both wanted the same toy, a plastic alligator. Eliza demanded that Lucy hand it over and Lucy held it up, out of her reach, and yelled, “No my boss!” The alligator was eventually traded for a mama and baby hippo.

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Hippos, or as she calls them, “HOE-POE,” have vaulted up the favorite animals list. Horses are still number one, though, and ohhhhh, the beaming, unrestrained joy on her face when the Peruvian Paso horses pranced by during this weekend’s St. Patrick’s Day parade.

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Eliza got hold of some playdough and decided she needed a horn.

 

I got a mustache:

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Lucy always wants to play with our phones, but for obvious reasons we are not cool with that. So we give her stand-ins like our old discarded cell phones. Lately, she really likes the calculator I got for my high school math class, I think because the buttons are really satisfying to push, so she’s claimed it for her own. Also, she thinks back-packs are the greatest, so I dug one out from somewhere that is shaped like Winnie the Pooh’s head, and she puts her phone, her hoe-poes, and a hoithee in there and walks around with it. Pants are totally optional. Hoodies are not.

Last night, she fell asleep wearing her backpack over her pajamas.

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She likes to ride in the laundry basket. I put her atop the pile of dirty laundry to carry it down, and then she helps me put it in the washer, sock by sock, and if she is very lucky, she gets to push the start button. When I take things out of the dryer, she rides on the warm pile, and then I tumble her plus the clean clothes onto the bed, which makes her giggle.