When the frozen chicken nuggets are on 1/2 price sale at Shoprite, I buy them for nights when Daniel works late and I need something quick and easy to feed Mara. She loves chicken nuggets, and she loves dipping them in ranch dressing. She calls it “chicken and ranch” and often suggests having it for dinner.
Well, tonight was one of those nights. The chicken nuggets were in the toaster oven. But Mara was impatient. “Mommeeeee, I want chicken and rannnnnch!” she whined.
I winced. “Mara, don’t whine.” How many times have I said that today?! But this time, her tone changed instantly.
She smiled her signature super-sweet smile, complete with the head-tilt to the side. “Chicken loves me!” she declared, adding, “and ranch loves me!” with the inflection of a junior higher talking about boys in her class.
“Chicken can’t love you, Mara,” I informed her. “Only people can really love you.”
“Ranches can lovvvvve,” she insisted. “And chickens can love too.”
The only plausible explanation for this statement is that she meant “I love chicken and ranch,” and somehow the communication of that concept was lost in her lack of understanding of English sentence structure. But she’s only 2. So I had a good laugh, despite her protests.
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“Where is the Kitchen Aid, Mommy?” Mara asked, from her high chair.
“It’s right here.” I pointed to it.
“That is not the Kitchen Aid. That is the MIXer!” Mara argued.
“It is a Kitchen Aid mixer,” I tried to help her understand. “See? Right here it says ‘Kitchen Aid.'” I pointed at each letter: “K-I-T-C-H-E-N A-I-D. So sometimes we just call it the ‘Kitchen Aid.'”
She pointed to the same letters I had just showed her. “It says ‘mixer’,” she contradicted emphatically. Then, plaguarizing largely from ‘Old MacDonald Had a Farm’ and pointing at each letter just as I had done, she “spelled” it out for me: “P-I-P-I-O. Mixer. P-I-P-I-O. Mixer.”
That’s my girl, for those of you who think my two-year-old is smart.