Today in the car home from the Caffe Lena Poetry Festival, Nadia suddenly took exception to being in her car seat and began demanding to be out of it. After we reiterated all the reasons why she knows full well that won't happen in a moving car, she resorted to "eh eh eh" whining.

In an attempt at distraction, Robin said "Is there a monkey in the car?"

She replied, with full-tilt melodrama, "No, it's your Nani, struggling and struggling to get out of her seat."

It doesn't translate to print so well, but Robin and I laughed for a full five minutes.

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Also, the most hysterically cute thing I've seen for months was Nadia and Zack sharing one of the chairs outside of the Ultraviolet Cafe, looking deep into each other's eyes while Zack murmured at her, "Playground. Plaaayground."

Nadia: "Milk!"

Robin: "I think you just want milk because you're bored."

Nadia (wails): "Noooooooooo!"

Robin: "OK. It was a theory."

Nadia (cheerfully): "No, it was a yell."

For all of lunchtime, through nap, Nadia declared that she was pretend Zack, Becca was Zack's mama, and I was Zack's mommy.

Becca asked what that would make Daddy when he came home.

With no pause, Nadia said cheerily, "A cow!!!"

(Um, kombu, yip95  is there something we should know?)

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Nadia (as a non-sequitor to the ongoing conversation): Maybe it's because you didn't want to read the dinosaur book!

Becca: I didn't know the dinosaur book was on the table.

Nadia: It's not! It's on the couch.

Becca: (attempts to explain phrase "on the table," which probably goes over Nadia's head)

a minute or two later...

Nadia (muttering under her breath to herself). I'm hungry. Maybe a real table would help.

Nadia, waking up in bed: "I'm chilly!"

Me: "OK, come here under the comforter."

Nadia: "No, I want raisins!"

Me: "That's not going to help with being chilly."

Nadia: "It will if you put them in the microwave!"


(We tried it. It didn't help. We moved on to slippers and had more success.)

Nadia, stirring after we'd thought she'd fallen asleep: "I want you to carry me somewhere!"

Me: "Where?"

Nadia: "Somewhere out of this room!"

Me: "Well, it's sleeping time, so we're going to stay in the bed. But you can go somewhere in your dreams. How about you pick a place, and close your eyes and think about what it looks like and what you'll do there?"

Nadia: (brief pause in which I foolishly think she's taking my advice)

Nadia: (Howl of protest)

Me: What's wrong?

Nadia: I want to dream about CATERPILLARS!!

Nadia (after a day of playing a lot with her doctor kit and making Becca and me come for appointments under the dining room table):

"I a doctor, you a doctor, Daddy a doctor. When Mama has a baby and I have a baby, you and Daddy will take care of my baby and I'll take care of Mama's baby."

"I'm going to put a jingle in your butt!"


(What she meant was "I'm going to put this jingle bell in your back pocket.")

that choosing to go without electric light (except for the Christmas tree) as a solstice observance would have made a severely underslept toddler sleepy and mellow. You would, of course, be quite wrong. But we had a lot of fun, right up until the meltdown. She's got the makings of clergy that one.

Becca: "Your tofu is ready, my lady."

Nadia: "I'm not a lady, I'm a person!"

(To be fair, she used to be really into being called "lady," and even "missy.")

Nadia: Who are you?

Me: Who do you think I am?

Nadia: Mir-i-am

Me: Yes, that's exactly right!

Nadia: No, silly. Your name is Miriam. You are Mommy.

Much, though by no means all, of Nadia's clothing and toys are hand-me-downs, purchased used, or made for her by someone she knows. She likes reciting which of her friends this shirt or those shoes used to belong to and going to the big "Pass-It-On" consignment sale.

Recently when we tried to explain that a certain toy she had had come to her new from the store, that we didn't know who had made it, and that no one had played with it before her, she got rather upset about it. (She was asking about each point. We didn't bring it up.) We were presenting it as a totally OK thing, but it just appeared to be not enough continuity for her.

I heard her a few days later inventing backstory about a big boy who used to have another new toy of hers "when I was a baby."

Another thing to file under "Huh. I wasn't even exactly trying to teach that value yet. I hope it last."

Becca was saying to Nadia at lunch that we needed to get more honey, because as it gets cooler we'll want it for our tea and our whole family likes tea.

Nadia proceeded to list the people who like tea, starting with her immediate family, and moving on to "Nana likes tea. Gramps likes tea."

At which point Becca said, "Well . . . Gramps drinks tea sometimes. But mostly he drinks coffee."

Without a millisecond of hesitation, Nadia pipes up: "And beer."

I didn't even know she knew the word.

From the mouths of toddlers:
(After Rebecca declined to open the fridge to get something she shouldn't have.)
"Aunt Suzanne, can you help I? It not open so much when I here by myself."

And this morning, with a sheet spread fussily across her knees:
"When I bigger, I make holes in my pants and fix them, like Daddy, and wear them again."
(This is when the false sense that it will be easy passing on our values sets in.)

Also, we have entered one of the famous cascading "Why" phases. I wasn't expecting it yet. It hasn't driven me crazy so far. It does get old sometimes, but mostly it's amusing to have to come up with answers to things like "Why do you like Mama?" or "Why I say I didn't like that?" (Uh, cause you were being obstreperous? What's uh-step-rous? etc.)

Getting in bed for naptime:

Nadia (lying with her foot in my face): "My foot want milk."

Becca and I both start to make obligatory noncommittal comments like "Really? Does your foot have a mouth?"

Meanwhile, ignoring us, Nadia grabs her foot, pulls it up to within inches of her own face and says, "You say 'please,' foot?"

 

Nadia is in to naming things recently. So, in case any of you feel the desire to address our body parts directly, she offers you this handy guide:

Rebecca and I each have eyes named "Blue" and "Green."
Robin and Nadia have eyes named "Purple" and "Blue."
Her nose is also named "Purple."
Her butt is named "Hi."
The other Tells have butts named "Dude."
Rebecca has one elbow named "Hey" and one named "Dude."
Rebecca has feet named "Booda" and "Eeda"

And  yes, the whole exercise was entirely her idea. Oh my. And don't laugh too hard, because if she knows your name, she seems pretty sure that your butt is named "Dude" too.

No matter what else happens or doesn't happen, our gardening this year is a success. Our two-year-old has plucked a pea pod off a pea plant she planted and eaten the peas out of it right then and there. And sitting on the picnic table eating more of them, she declared, "I eat my garden!"

I am inordinately pleased.

I don't have time for a full recounting, but here's a few notes:

--Nadia turned two this week, is very proud of it, and enjoyed herself mightily.
--For a toddler birthday party, all you *really* need is a massive room full of balloons.
--For you doubters out there, a helium mylar balloon can in fact be retrieved from a cathedral ceiling by means of another helium balloon covered in loops of tape and put on a very long string. (Thanks for the implementation, Cadao!)
--The playground right off the Sprain Brook Parkway at the border of Yonkers and the Bronx is almost as cool as the Bronx Zoo. Especially if you're two.
--The Bronx Zoo is pretty awesome. To wit: squirrel monkeys! tigers! sea lions! big kids!  streams to throw rocks in!  hot air hand dryers! peacocks! prairie dogs! a picnic table! a stone wall! etc. The children's zoo part hit just the right note. We did have a midday meltdown, which I think was largely ear pain, but we took our cue to leave early, went back to the playground, and it was all good. We want to go back sometime.
--It is actually possible for Nadia to remain awake and cheerful for an entire three hour drive. Astounding. Taking a break to be careened around a rest area in a high-chair on wheels helps.
--Speaking of rocks, I love that we know people who realize that I was serious when I said Nadia is at the stage where throwing rocks in water is about the best thing ever, and actually gave her a bag of hand-selected rocks as her present. (My dad had also selected a pile for her. Great minds think alike.) She was thrilled.
--Chiropractic adjustments for stubborn ear infections: it's early yet, but initial indicators are really good. Keep it in mind.
--For those who may not have quite believe how many volunteer tomatoes we had last year and how many we didn't get to pick: I am weeding tomatoes out of nearly every patch of my garden. Really. Today I thinned down the one square where we're going to let them grow. We'll see how many we get if we don't have a late winter like last year, but maybe I'll save the seeds of the first to ripen and do my own little breeding.


OK. We're off to GottaGetGon before long, and I'm going to go start loading the car. Yay!

(inevitable given where we live, that is.)

Nadia has made her first stated when-I-grow-up career goal: "I big person, fire fighter. I put out fires."

This is partly due to having a fire safety comic one of the firefighters gave her, which has also inspired her to make us test the smoke alarm batteries. Not that she really intended that. Just that she made us explain them, and show her what they sounded like.