Sophie's Comedy Stylings

Q: "Why did the Christmas tree go be in the poop?"

A: "And he wanted to go on the other tree and he couldn't come out!"

-----

"Once there was an old man reading a book and there was poopies on the page!"

-----

Q: "Why did the boat and the car go on the road?"

A: "Because the boat was too big and didn't fit into the car! And he was poopie on the top of the car!"

A Surfeit of Santas

She's been talking lately about how she's seen two different Santas.

She saw one Santa on a parade float and another at the apartment complex clubhouse where she sat on his lap.

She's pretty sure these were two separate dudes.

Her mother and I tell her that there's just one Santa and that perhaps she's mistaken. ('Cause when telling lies to your child, go all in, I say).

Most recently she looked thoughtful and conceded that perhaps he'd just changed his shirt.

Blah Blah Blah

"'Blah Blah Blah!' is what my Daddy says, 'Blah Blah Blah!'"

two steps closer to independence

Sophie is skipping briskly on her way to independence.
In the last week she´s started to dress herself (hurrah) and now loves to take showers and wash her hair repeatedly (double hurrah)

She´s now dressing herself. However, it takes a bit of bribery. Maybe next week we can start getting dressed without "incentives". About half the time, the underwear goes on backwards, but she tells me that it´s fine like that.

Suddenly, she has wanted to start taking showers. While we were excited about that, we were double excited to see her start washing her hair repeatedly over and over. She would hardly ever let us do that to her in the bath tub. In one day she washed her hair more than we had done so in three months in the tub. She had the cleanest hair of all of her classmates that day.

The Santa Gambit

I feel like a heartless ogre.

Tonight at dinner we resorted to threatening Sophie with missing a parade if she wouldn't eat.

Santa will be in the parade tonight, and we told her that we'd shout out to him: "Sophie has been good!" if she ate, but that we'd have to tell him she'd been bad if she didn't.

This was highly effective at first.

Perhaps you've seen the buckets suspended high on poles at water parks. They slowly fill with water, and then suddenly empty out on whoever is standing below. Because you can't see in the bucket, you don't ever really know when it will empty. Little kids stand below, giggling in anticipation.

Sophie was doing quite well, really quite well, when we went a step too far.

In an effort to get one last bite in her, I grabbed the phone and told her I was going to have to call Santa to cancel the parade.

We'd done this before, earlier, and the result had been a hastily gobbled spoonful of lentils.

This time, Sophie burst into heartbroken, racking sobs of despair.

I hugged her, and kissed her, and told her we were definitely going to the parade.

And then we gave her a gingerbread man we'd been saving for later. Which she devoured. And it was a big gingerbread man, too.

So: Santa Gamit=failed.

Self-incrimination

We built a gingerbread house.

Sophie has been told that it's for looking and not for eating. And she's been doing really well.

Tonight I told her: "Mommy and Daddy are really impressed. You've done really well remembering that the house is to look and not touch."

"I was pretty sure there would be a bite taken out of the roof by now," I told her visiting grandma.

"I just take little bites," she told us.

Naughty vs. Nice

We went into a Hallmark shop today. I told her that this was a "hands in pockets" store.

"What's that?" she wanted to know.

I explained that she shouldn't touch anything.

She proceeded to not only not touch anything, but to berate me when I picked up a ceramic pig to check the price on the bottom.

"Daddy! No touching!!"

-----

We made a gingerbread house today. It looked almost like the picture on the box. Almost.

We told Sophie that it was for looking, not for eating. She attempted to bargain.

"Look, Sophie," I said, "It's only for decoration. We've got other gingerbread for eating."

"Oh good!" she said, "Let's eat that then!"

Her mother cackled.

-----

Later I found a chunk of icing on missing from the veranda. I called Sophie's attention to this and asked her what she thought might have happened.

Yes, I was being a bit cruel and so deserved the lie that came.

"That came this way," she told me. "Yes, that came this way I think that came this way."

-----

The cultural rut of Santa Claus is too deep to be avoided.

We fell into a discussion of naughty and nice. Lists were mentioned. The topic of a mysterious, vast and pervasive regime of surveillance was broached.

We attempted to use this chat to leverage our daughter into what we consider good behavior.

"I be good!" she told us.

Later I told her she couldn't have a piece of gingerbread before dinner. She had to wait till after she ate.

She scowled at me and shouted: "You not nice!" And she may have added: "You naughty!"