Soooo, here’s a draft post I started months ago and never posted . . . I still want to remember . . . so I’ll just post it now.
Explaining why she couldn’t pick up the piece of trash on the floor:
“Yucky yucky! Little piece . . .”
“Of what?” I asked. “A little piece of what?”
“Little piece of . . . I tan’t pict it up! It’s DOSE!!! [gross]”
Explaining to Daddy that we really did make him a birthday cake, after I told her it was top-secret:
“We made TAKE!” she shouted as soon as Daddy walked in the door. Then running into the kitchen and pointing at the stove, she yelled, “TAKE in uh-nen [cake in oven].”
“No, honey, that’s not a cake,” I said, hoping Daniel wouldn’t figure it out. “That’s our dinner.” It was indeed our dinner, but Mara had gone down for a nap with the cake in the oven, and awoke to find the oven still on, and the cake hidden, so she firmly believed it was still in the oven.
She wasn’t backing down: “No!” she firmly insisted. “Not ‘not take’! Iss take!”
[Sigh.] The secret’s out.