Dear Babybel,
Now that you're three, the monthly developments seem a little less significant. The degree to which you can successfully pick your nose or the milliseconds less it takes you to put on your shoes seem numerically immeasurable.
Nonetheless, it seems I should keep up with the practice of writing to you monthly, if only to tell you how much I love you.
While you look like your daddy, in most ways you are a lot like me. It's TBD how much of your personality is your DNA and how much of it because you spend so much time with me.
Specifically, you use a lot of the phrases I use. Your manerisms are similar.
The other day, I put Danjo down for a nap without her Lovie. I began to wander the house like a crazy person, talking to myself. This is something I did before you existed in the tangible world; talked to inanimate objects, mumbled to myself while putting together IKEA furniture. But, which I now euphemistically claim is a practice that is "beneficial to developing your meta-cognitive, problem solving and critical thinking skills."
"Lovie, where arrrrre you?" I sing-song asked.
She was no where to be found.
"Bel, have you seen your sister's Lovie?" I asked, knowing you're the observant type, hoping you had either seen it somewhere or mischievously hid it somewhere yourself.
You didn't skip a beat, as you sat on the couch, reading a book. You didn't look up. You didn't bother to feign a search effort.
"Hmmmm. That's strange," you said.
You routinely use phrases like these. Things you've picked up and use in context. You're SO precocious. You know that "Hmmmm. That's strange" is something that someone says when something mysteriously goes missing, when it can't be found. Given that you DIDN'T EVEN LOOK, I guess this was an appropriate usage.
You often alert us when you have to pee: "Oh! I have to go pee!"
Now, I'm starting to think that you're just being "meta-cognitive" and that you probably learned this from me.
I'm notorious for holding it. For noting aloud, I have to go pee. And STILL not going. Because there's something good on TV. Or the Internet, in general. Or I just have to finish this one thing, then this thing, and that thing, and that reminds me about the other thing. And by then my body has forgotten what it needs to do.
I have to pee right now, actually.
Ask your daddy. Ask Auntie Katherine, who was my college roommate. Both just shake their heads, wondering why I would make declarations about pressing bodily functions and then JUST SIT THERE, YOU CRAZY!
I was doing something Very Important, I'm sure, on my laptop the other morning, a cup of coffee in my hand. So, you can guess where this is going. And very quickly.
"I have to go potty!" I declared, but this really couldn't be ignored.
And Babyel, you gave me just the encouragement I needed to get to the bathroom in time: "Well then, GO, MOMMY!"
Do you guys hear an echo?
But, you're no copy cat. You choose your own clothes, based on no ones fashion sense but your own. You refuse to copy both lower and uppercase letters.
Now that you're not going to preschool anymore, we have "school" at home. Don't worry, People, I'm not trying to get her into college. It's just in your nature, Babybel, to like structure. You are driven by goals and task-oriented. You like to check off those little square "To Do" boxes. You ask "what does it want me to do?" when you see words in a coloring book or the back of a children's menu.
So, I figured some workbooks and flash cards and a dry erase lap board and Unifix counting manipulatives and a set of tangrams and matching puzzles and my college microeconomics text book couldn't hurt, right? What? Too much?
Anyway, during school time, which takes place after breakfast and SSR and piano lessons (I wish I was kidding about that), I was showing you how to distinguish between and write the letter "A" and "a." You did a workbook page, tracing the letters and coloring an apple using a key (A = red, a = green). NBD. I was able to do the dishes while you buried yourself in pseudo-educational endeavors.
"I'm done, Mommy!" you said.
And I've taken to being specific and non-committal about my praise. (See last month's letter.)
"You! Are! Done!" I declared with the enthusiasm of a high school pep-squad. And you glowed, accordingly, with the pride of a high school boy lying about kissing one of the pep-squad girls. Which, I guess isn't very glowy. But, fitting, because you did let the excitement show through at first, but then pulled back in a sort of I'm Too Cool Over-It way, all nonchalant, like: Oh yeah, you're the Letter A? Well, I own you.
So, I told you to practice writing the letter "a" on your dry erase board. I wrote it a few times, made dashed lines for you to trace, then walked away.
I looked over a few minutes later and you had filled the board with lines of squigglies, the way a child does when they are pretending to write.
Appreciating your pretend writing skills and in full light of my pride at your great print-awareness, you and I both know full well that the "scribble scrabble" as YOU call it, when describing (and dismissing) someones inferior drawing, was NOT the letter "a."
Sorry to get all Tiger Mother on you. And while The People may disagree, it's not that I'm pushing you so much as I know what you are capbable of doing. Scribble scrabble pretend writing is all well and good when you're taking my fake drink order or working at your play kitchen table writing your memoirs. But, damn it, I TOLD YOU TO WRITE THE LETTER "A".
Okay, I wasn't that mean. I just said, "That's not the letter 'A', Maribel." I showed you again how to write the upper and lowercase letter: "a line down, a line down, like the sides of a triangle and a shelf across. See? And the little 'a' is a circle with a line on the side."
You looked up at me, a blank stare. You looked back down at your white board. And with no trouble at all: a line, a line, a shelf across, followed by a circle and a line.
You looked back up at me, hovering over your shoulder, "SEE!?" your eyes said, "I OWN THE LETTER A, YOU CRAZY WOMAN."
Hee hee, I laughed nervously, fearful of your wrath: "Uh, Good job, honey!" I mustered, knowing you didn't need an ounce of my approval.
And back to scribble scrabbling you went.
Annnnnd. Belated. I present the rest of your Three Year Old portraits by Unkinan Reyes Gibbs of Figure Four Fotos.
Gorg.
Love you no matter what,
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