Wonder Baby Wednesday #14 (Halloween!)

Wonder Baby Powers, activate! Form of....the ladybug who will one day rule the universe!

At least, with a magic wand, you'd think she might be able to rule the universe. If she wants to. Or she might just wave her magic wand and create a nice big bowl of "maccheese" for herself. Yes, that would certainly make her happy.

Also, check out the jazz hand and the silver shoes. Maybe this is the ladybug who will one day star on Broadway?

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How did I become the mean lady?

You might think you know where I'm going with this, but my daughter still thinks I'm great. I imagine she might think I'm the mean lady some day, but not just yet.

No, it's Eme's little friend who thinks I'm the mean lady.

We had a play date at our house with a new little friend (she's just over 2 years old) the other day. The friend was a little shy at first, since it was all Eme's toys instead of her own and she had never been here before, asking her mommy to do things with her instead of interacting with Eme. This is exactly what Eme does in strange situations (wants me to do activities first so she knows they're okay), so I just smiled and encouraged Eme to keep playing near the friend until she warmed up.

The friend went to dump out the crayons. Her mommy gently said "no, we don't dump." I said that if she wanted to dump, that was okay with me. Eme dumps the crayons all the time.

Look at me, the cool mom who lets toddlers dump stuff!

By this point the friend had become a little bit frustrated and was throwing crayons. Her mommy said "we don't throw crayons!" I thought I was backing the mom up when I looked at the girl and said -- VERY gently, I might add -- "no, sweetheart, no throwing crayons." (Even cool moms have limits.)

The friend burst into tears. She hugged her mommy and wailed "nooooo. nooooooo!" miming throwing something. She wouldn't be consoled by her blanket, or by cuddling, or by distraction.

Here we were, ten minutes into the play date, and I had done something that made her so upset that she actually told her mommy she wanted to go home and attempted to open the front door to leave.

So much for being the cool mommy. All of a sudden I was the mean lady who chastises poor, defenseless little girls.

After a while her mommy managed to calm her down, and the friend even warmed up to me a little bit later when we played catch with a tennis ball (yes, I let her throw a ball in the house; I have a strong need for affirmation, so I couldn't go around letting her think I was uncool).

It felt so strange, though, to be the one that the friend thought was mean. I'm so used to my baby thinking I'm the best, calling for mommy when she's upset, and only willing to be consoled by me, that this came as a little bit of a shock. In fact, I wondered if it's how other people feel when my baby is upset and I'm the only one who can console her....

I don't like being the mean lady, even if it was by accident and temporary.

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Wonder Baby Wednesday #13 (and actually on a Wednesday this time!)

Wonder Baby Powers, activate! Form of.....The Incredible Shrinking Toddler!

Or is she still her usual size and just on a gigantic swing? I leave it to your judgement to decide. :)

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Wonder Baby Wednesday #12 (I couldn't let ANOTHER week pass by with no pictures)

Wonder Baby Powers, activate! Form of...........Static Electricity Girl!

(Also known as "the coolest girl at the park," or Storm from X-Men -- didn't her hair stand on end before she created a storm? Someone who knows more about X-Men, please confirm.)

Yes, Eme inherited her mother's fine hair, which stands up at the slightest provocation.

And before you say it, yes, I know it's Thursday. Wonder Baby Thursday doesn't sound as good.

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Update: Mr. Mewhansson

As an update to my post on coloring Hello Kitty, this is Mr. Mewhansson.

After I colored Hello Kitty's teacher's shirt pink and his tie pink and green, I added the goatee. I was already chuckling in my head at the resemblance to what Andreas wears to teach (that's why I colored the shirt pink in the first place), and then I practically burst with laughter when I came up with the name. I was laughing so hard that I failed to fit the whole name on the page.

I have to keep myself amused somehow.

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Another Nerd Handbook 2.0 moment

One of Eme's favorite restaurants, recently, has been "Big Cow."

That's what she calls Chick-Fil-A because of the poster of the big cow that stands at the entrance. It's probably not the food she likes best (though she likes both fruit and chicken, both of which she gets there). I imagine it's the play area.

She hangs like a monkey, slides down the slide ("beeeeeeeeeeeee!" Yes, that's her version of "whee"), and generally has a good time telling other kids to "go. goooooooooo!"

Recently, the toys that have been coming with the children's meal have been science-related, which I like. We have "collected" a graduated cylinder and a beaker, so far.

The other day (beaker day) I heard a mother asking what she was going to do with a graduated cylinder (even though she was holding a beaker). "What do I do, say 'here you go baby, here's a graduated cylinder?'"

A few points:
1) Technically, the science toys are for kids over 3; there are board books if you prefer a different toy for "babies." Since they're plastic, though, they're perfectly safe for Eme, which was why we didn't make a fuss about her being under 3.
2) What the mom was saying, that's basically what we did. We said "here you go, Emelie, here's a graduated cylinder" (about the actual graduated cylinder; for the beaker we said "here's a beaker"). She got really excited about it. What's wrong with that?
3) Eme had a fantastic time with her graduated cylinder and beaker. We gave them to her in the bath, and she spent her time measuring the bath water, pouring from one cylinder to the other. She became very sad when it was time to put them away.

I did mention to the mother (as I passed by her table) that I couldn't help overhearing and it happens that we use ours as bath toys. She just said, "oh."

I know. We're nerds. But we're okay with that.

It looks like our baby might be a nerd, too. We're certainly okay with that!

Turns out that the revision of the nerd handbook that she was working on in the womb has more science in it than my version did, though.

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Really? Disney?

I certainly never planned to introduce Eme to the Disney catalog.

Yes, we had a lot of Winnie the Pooh stuff (it's just such cute nursery decoration), but that hardly counts, right?

Then we got a set of pink books -- the Disney Princess collection -- as a gift. I figured I had years before she'd even be able to handle them because they have a lot of words and thin pages.

(This is the part where I discover that Eme will like what she likes no matter what I like.)

First she was attracted to the big box of pink books on her bookshelf. I opened the books for her, but she took a look and didn't really do much with them for a month or so.

Next she pulled the books out again and asked me to read them to her, and quicker than I would have thought possible she has made them her favorites. I (and everyone else who ever enters our house) is now subjected to a read-through of all 12 books.

She knows some of the characters by name, others by what they do in the books. She says "Dot" when she wants to read the story about Dot the ant from A Bug's Life, or "shoes" and "uh-oh" when she wants to read Cinderella. Mulan is "muuuuu" and "dagn" (for dragon), or when she wants to read about Jessie from Toy Story II she says "horse!" (they ride a horse in the book).

I have even started to seek out the classic princess movies so I can show parts of them to her.

I wonder why it is that these stories caught her imagination. Is it that everyone who reads them has fun with them (because we've all seen the movies) and that fun comes through in the telling? Or is it that there really is something magical about Disney that children (even 19-month-olds who don't get to watch more than an hour of tv per week) connect with?

Either way, I'm again amazed by finding myself crossing a boundary that I'd set (granted, it was a rather arbitrary one) to accommodate something that Eme finds to be interesting. I guess that's what mommies do.

(Although, I have been amusing myself by categorizing the stories by antagonist, or by whether the princess in the given story has any parents alive, etc. I'll share those musings in another post in the future.)

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