A Trio of Snapshots

I.

Mermaid Girl is on the floor, deeply absorbed in playing with all the coins shaken out of her Humpty Dumpty bank. First she lines them up, then she sorts them into various containers (a mini-treasure-box, her shoes, etc.)

"Now they are all lining up to go into the box... now they are all going to graduate school. They're getting on the buses!"

(Later, I asked her about graduate school: What is it? "It's the school you go to when you graduate from your regular school." And how old are the people who go to graduate school? "Oh, about five or six." So graduate school is like kindergarten? "Yeah."

Thinking back on library school, I have to say she may be more right than she even knows.)

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II.

We have a CD on and the Girl is dancing around the kitchen in full ballet regalia. She looks so graceful and serious, I stand for a moment in the doorway between kitchen and living room to admire her. She stops and glares at me: "Mommy, please move. You're in the way!"

"In the way?"

"Yes, you're in the way of the people." She gestures past me into the living room.

"Oh-- the audience? The people watching you dance?"

"Yes!" (Very stern and exasperated)

"Oh-- um, sorry. I'll move. I didn't know."

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III.

I just made tea for the two of us, and MG wants honey in hers. I'm dithering around the kitchen counter, muttering, "Honey, honey, where's the honey?"

She points at the honey, which is half-hidden behind a bag of something, and says, with perfect inflection, "What's that? Chopped liver?"