Calliope, Three and a Half

Lest you think I'm neglecting her dreadfully, when I ask to take her photo, she answers politely, "no thank you."

I feel like I have to respect that, so no photos. Except for when she's with Leo -- she allows it then.

Last week she said, "How about if on Friday, Abby and Calliope go ice skating, and then we get married, and then we have hot chocolate?"

Be still my beating heart.

We had just read the book And Tango Ma.kes Three, a very sweet book about a male penguin couple (can animals be called gay?) at the Central Park Zoo raising a baby penguin together. And she has the Paper Bag Prin.cess, a story about a princess who beats the odds to rescue her betrothed, only to decide she doesn't want him anyway. I think these are her only books about coupling, which is sort of funny. But she asked Amy about marriage recently -- Amy got out her wedding album and the girl were entranced by the "princess dresses" -- so I guess she's picking up the concept without my saying anything.

She's started to say "I love you" in the last couple of months. Rarely and quietly, so it has maximum impact when she does say it.

She's finally showing an interest in the book about her conception story, and has chosen it for her bedtime story the last two nights. I think she's not actually interested in her conception, but likes the part where I talk about how happy I am to be her Mommy.

Strangely, despite her acknowledging that it's hard work to get a baby born, she hasn't asked any more questions about how  the baby gets out. I told her once that "usually a baby comes out through her Mommy's vag,ina -- isn't that crazy?" but she didn't respond so I dropped it.

She was coughing this morning -- and fiending for a spoonful of honey -- and so informed Susie, "I'm having a 'coughy' morning." Yep, on this first work day after Daylight Savings Time started, I think a lot of us are having "coffee" mornings.

And randomly, she will tell me, "Mommy, I have a whisper for you." And whisper something totally unsecrtetive into my ear. To keep all the others in our apartment from hearing??? Likewise, when we in Mexico in our hotel room, she insisted on closing the bathroom door when we were in there together, "to keep the babies out."

She's very interested in letters and just realized she can identify the numbers and letters on our neighbors doors and mailboxes. I wouldn't say she's anywhere close to reading but she likes putting magnetic alphabet letters together on the fridge and asking hopefully, "what does this say? Is this a word?"

I introduced the concept of vowels, and how every word has to have at least one, and she seemed to sort of understand. I'm not pushing it. She loves reading and will often get books out and sit on the couch and flip through them, narrating the story to herself. I want to preserve that love of books. The great thing about her play based education is that I can really see her progressing through the early stages of literacy without my pushing her at all. It all just unfolds naturally, which is amazing to behold.

And finally, at Shabbat dinner last week with Eleanor and her parents, Calliope remarked conversationally to Seth, Eleanor's dad, "Seth, my Mommy has hair on her tushy."

He didn't hear her at first so she repeated it a couple of times. Awesome.

I wanted to defend myself with "actually, it's my vag.ina that's hairy! But she calls her vag.ina her tushy!" But I decided the best course of action was to keep my mouth shut.