Pippi Sanders-stocking

A few notes from late summer...Rosemary keeps me plenty entertained with her kid logic observations about the world. Yesterday we were heading somewhere and she saw an old toilet sitting in front of someone's house -- I think the result of recent renovations, not someone cultivating a hillbilly-chic planter. She said, "A bathroom outside??? THAT's funny."

Less entertaining are the total melt downs and whining spates and general frustration -- usually over wanting to do something on her own, but that's pretty dull blogging so I'll just note for the record that they are a constant and move on. Text book twos. On the plus side, she and her friends now really, truly play together, for short stretches.

At her 2 1/2 year old check up (which went astoundingly well, possibly because of the promise of her first lollipop...no hysteria or tears for the first time in 1 1/2 years), the doctor asked whether she had developed fears. Answer: And how! She's been scared of the doctor for awhile , but her biggest fear du jour is fireworks. I feel bad about this, since I had pushed for us to go to a fireworks display on 4th of July and she flipped out. She and Jason fled the scene. (Our nephew Dashiell, who's about the same age, had a ball. Different strokes.) Now we can't watch a movie that has fireworks, read a book that has pictures of them, etc. We talk about them constantly. I think we will sit out next 4th of July.

There's a lot of discussion about "Yesterday when I was littler" - which can refer to an hour ago, a day ago, or a year ago. Today she said, "Maybe we'll go to sninky again today?" "Sninky? What's that?" "A store we ate at when I was little." "A restaurant?" "No, a store. SNINKY." It took the better part of the conversation before I could figure out that "Sninky" was "Stinky," the name of a cheese store around here. We went there a week ago and I got a sample - she refrained, being (sadly) suspicious of cheese that doesn't come in a stick form or straight from the yellow Tillamook cheese package. It's interesting to see what memories lurk in that little noggin. The other day she said our friend Annie makes "good popcorn" and I think the only time we had popcorn at Annie's was more than a year ago. I think that was the first time she had popcorn so I guess it was formative.

Milady still never leaves the house without "a purse and a friend" -- favorite purse still being pink purse, though sometimes she mixes it up. Purse is stuffed FULL of crap, like Ally Sheedy in the Breakfast Club. Favorite friend changes from day to day but is usually a stuffed animal. (Brown bunny, mousie, piggy, and floppy bunny are some regulars.)