Mara and I had a delightful day together. Days like today remind that I wouldn’t trade the privilege of staying at home with my children for anything. She was so much fun!
In the morning I was putting Christmas decorations away, and since she loves to wear hats, she paraded around for awhile wearing the Santa hat. I had to take a picture!
We tried on an outfit Grandma “Bubben” had given her when we visited back in October, and it fits now! So she was super-excited to wear a new purple outfit with her “perkle” shoes. 
She says, “Call Gamma?” whenever she thinks something merits telling Grandma. So we did. Then I took pictures to show Grandma (Mara in the outfit she gave her), and Mara insists that Mommy get in the picture too. I felt completely unprepared to be photographed, but who can resist when their 2-year-old daughter asks Mommy to come in the picture with her?
Then we tried on a dress that I got for her on eBay last summer. I got it in the hopes of getting a Christmas portrait or a portrait of the two kids together–which never materialized–so she’s never even tried on the dress. When she put it on, I wished all the more that I had taken them for portraits, because she looked adorable in the dress! So we had a little photo session of our own!
Before Daniel came home, I was working in the kitchen, and Mara came in with a cup and a spoon. “Mara make soup,” she said. “RED soup!”
“Red soup?” I repeated. “Is it chili?”
Mara nodded. “BEANS in it,” she said.
“Daddy like it!” she smiled in anticipation.
“Are you making soup for Daddy?”
Mara nodded again, her blue eyes twinkling. And if that wasn’t enough to make Mommy’s heart melt, she said, “Dressed up! before Daddy comes home!”
“You want to get dressed up?”
“Pink dress!” she exclaimed. “Tights!” Wow, she has this whole thing planned out!
She doesn’t actually own a pink dress, but she has a brown dress with pink flowers, which she calls her “pink dress.” I set aside dinner preparations to take her upstairs and get “dressed up” for Daddy! My heart was so touched by her excitment to see Daddy and her desire to do something special for him! It kind of made me want to get dressed up for Daddy too!!
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My second Mara story is not nearly so . . . romantic . . . and needs three preliminary explanations:
* First, when Mara says “Bee-ya?” she means “What’s that?” She has done this for probably 8 months or so by now. We have no idea why. We have just noticed that whenever she doesn’t know what something is or wants to know what something is, she points to it and asks “Bee-ya?”
* Second, she calls nasal congestion “buggers.” (At this point, you are legitimately concerned about where this post is going!)
* Third and finally, she will randomly attach unrelated timeframes to her sentences. For instance, she might say, “Daddy work Friday.” It’s not Friday. It hasn’t been for three days. We aren’t talking about Friday. But she’ll just throw a timeframe out there that she’s heard before. She also references “last year” all the time. Not quite sure why. She just does.
Okay, so here’s the story: I pulled some hamburgers out of the freezer to grill for dinner.
Mara says, “Bee-ya? Bee-ya?”
“Hamburgers!” I said. “We’re going to have them for dinner.”
A look of understanding flashed across her face, as she said, “Mara–hamburgers in her nose last year!”
Wow. I couldn’t help it–I was dying laughing!