Growing Up

Miss M is growing up. She's started saying the word "pancakes" correctly. But I'll miss her "pam-panks."

She still doesn't get everything right, though. She was going on and on about gophers: "I don't like gophers. Gophers are scary! Why are gophers scary, Mommy?"

We racked our brains trying to remember if she'd sen a movie, a cartoon, perhaps, where the villian is a gopher. Finally the mystery was solved when she brought us the Playmobil catalog her brother had been reading with her and showed us a picture of the scary "gopher." It was a Playmobil ghost! I guess ghost could sound like gopher . . .

She still gets black and white backwards. She calls black white, and white black.

Another sign that she's growing up - I've read her books, but never felt like she was following the story. She likes the pictures, though. Yesterday I read her a favorite, The Circus Baby by Maud and Miska Petersham, an old, out of print falling apart book. The story is simple, perfect for a three-year-old. A mother elephant decides that her baby elephant should learn to be refined and eat like real people, like the circus clowns. She she takes him into the clown's tent, sits him on a stool with a bowl of beans and a big spoon, and persuades him to try using the spoon. Of course, with no hands, the result is disastrous and the whole tent ends up coming down on them before it's all over.




When I read it yesterday, Miss M laughed at the funny parts (she's never done that before) and, after it was over, wanted a bowl and big serving spoon so she could pretend to be a baby elephant and knock the bowl off the table and knock the chair over. Daddy didn't think this was very funny, but it's showing me that she's finally ready to move beyond board books to real stories.

Her other favorite stories are Madeline and Corduroy.