Bee's turn

Now two and a quarter (I can't count months anymore!), Bee is becoming more and more conversational. She repeats us like a parrot might, but remembers everything she learns and uses new words and phrases again and again. She sings entire songs, which is so ridiculously cute I can barely stand it. She sings the Ponyo song (and the remix, yelling "it's the REMIX!"), Winnie the Pooh, Elmo's Song, Alligators All Around, Eep Opp Ork Ah Ah, the Wheels on the Bus, I Love Trash, and so on. Today she made me sing the Wheels on the Bus so many times as we walked through our neighborhood that I got desperate. ("The, ummm, the snacks on the bus say yum, yum, yum...") Sorry, neighbors!

Johnny caught her on video singing the ABCs here:





Her first narrative story, which I've heard 10000000 times since she, Johnny, Teeny, Dana and Stan visited the butterfly exhibit at the Biodome in Montreal without me back in April, goes as follows: "A butterfly landed on my shoulder. It was blue and brown. It was scary!" (Here, her eyes get wide.) "It said 'Hi Bee!' and then it flew away!"

Some pictures from that day here:

This has sparked a new obsession with butterflies. We draw them, go outside looking for them, talk about them, paint them on her face, and find them in books and magazines everywhere.
 
She likes to play with the mirror feature on my phone and take a million pictures at a time, making sillier and sillier faces, both with me:

and without me:

Some other things she says a lot:

"Remember the Elephant Walk?" (my favorite restaurant in Boston)

Thora, when Johnny is filming her: "No! No pictures!"



Me: Hi Bee, did you have fun with Poppa?
Bee: No. I was crying!

I ride my bike with the pedals!

Me: Bee, are you ready for your nap?
Bee: No, I'm not tired. I wake up!

Close your eyes, Mama. Go to sleep!

Pat my back!

Every morning after I run I make a protein shake in the Vita-Mix.
Bee: That's loud! It makes noise!
Me: It's just mixing my drink, Bee.
Bee: I want some. I will try it. With a straw.

Bee: I wanna wear my pink tutu!
Me: Okay, Bee. Who gave you your pink tutu?
Bee: Hilary did! I want a lollipop! (Hilary also gave her her first lollipop.)

I wanna make waffles. We need flour and sugar and baking soda and rice milk and bananas. And the waffle iron!



Bee (grabbing my iPhone): I want to look at pictures of Bee.

Bee, upon returning to the corner of 116th and Amsterdam, where a school fair was with a medieval looking bouncy house (that she didn't even go in) a week earlier : "Where did the castle go?" At the same school fair, she got her face painted for the first time. She got a butterfly, of course.  I had to practically hold her down in her seat to stay still for it, but once she was finished she was so happy!

Now painting is for all parts of the body:

Bee, at 6 am, holding her arms out to me: Hi Mama! I did a big big poop!

Let's make Daddy coffee. I wanna mix it!

Bee (with wrinkled nose): Poop smells bad. Pee-you!

Our car's running! Go, go, go! I wanna drive. (In the first two of these she was planning to drive to Boston to visit Hilary.)

Bee, to her baby sister: Good morning, Teeny! How you doin'?

Bee, stuck in the car seat for hours on end and really really bored: I wanna stretch my legs and get some coffee, Mama. (This is what we say every time we see a Starbucks on the road.)

Bee, newly obsessed with her sister's jars of baby food: I want prunes!
Me: We don't have any more prunes, Bee.
Bee: Let's go buy prunes. We have to buy prunes, Mama!

She learned "under." As in, Mama, I go under the tree!

While she still struggles with the difference between "me" and "you" and "you" and "I," (for example she usually tells me she wants to "stretch your legs and get some coffee" she absolutely understands MINE. That is currently our least favorite word. I tell her she's like the Mine-o-Saur from a book we like but I'm not having much success convincing her that's a bad thing just yet. Luckily, she also understands "not yours" and "it's not your turn." She is only beginning to understand sharing and actually playing with someone instead of just next to someone. For hard-to-give-up toys, iPhones and activities, counting to 20 works like a charm. It distracts her because she loves to count and by the time we get to 20 she's usually bored of whatever she's holding or doing and is fine handing it over.

Clearly she spends time with other kids who call their mothers Mommy, because occasionally she will call me that and I always correct her. "I'm not your Mommy, Bee, I'm your Mama." Maybe someday she will decide I am Mommy and then I'll deal with it, but not today!

My other least favorite thing is when she insists on having something specific to eat or drink like peanut butter and jelly or a Big Bird juice and then three seconds after I hand it to her, she frowns and shakes her head. "I don't want it anymore, Mama."

Of all the things she says, this is my absolute favorite right here: