Monday, November 14, 2011

More Shocking Than if She Had Flipped Me Off

The other night Sody said the most shocking word I have heard her say yet: "hate." She had been having a little tantrum out of nowhere about her pajamas...who knows why: because I forgot to let her do the zipper or because the pajamas have hippos and she decided not to like hippos that day or because of anything, really. It could have been anything. But she freaked out for no reason in that special two-year-old way and then was sitting on her bed in a crying screaming mess about it and suddenly started screeching, "I HATE these pajamas! I hate them, I hate them!!" and I stopped in my tracks.

Hate.

Such a strange word to come out of the mouth of such a small person. It was awful because she knew it and said it and used it correctly. Such a negative emotion I don't want her to know and feel and say, not yet. She is still too little and pure for such a thing. And it got even worse after we put on new pajamas (yep, I gave into the irrational desires of a toddler - what of it? You wanna come over and wrestle my crying, snotty kid into bed when she is wailing for ridiculous reasons?). I told her to go give Daddy a kiss goodnight and she told me, "NO. I hate him."

Oh man, I could have cried right there. Where is my baby getting this? How is she learning and spewing about hating things? And worse, hating people? Worst of the worst - hating *Daddy*?? It wasn't just perplexing, it really, really bummed me out. Something about it seemed like a little loss of innocence in a weird way. And I wondered about it, and was sad about it, and was confused by it...until the very next night at bedtime again. We cuddled up and cracked open our first book of the night: How the Grinch Stole Christmas. This was a brand new book that Daddy had been reading to her a lot in the preceding days, so much so that she has already memorized a lot of the lines. Maybe you are familiar with the book: it starts out with, "The Grinch *hated* Christmas..."

OHHHHHHHH.

Duh.

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Obligatory Halloween Post

Halloween already feels like a good long while ago, but I am not skipping a post about it because I was really excited at how the costumes turned out this year. I finally hit the jackpot with family costumes with a theme: Burger Time! Sody was a cheeseburger, Joe was mustard and I was ketchup (of course).

I had been mulling over the Halloween costume question for a bit, and trying to determine if Sody wanted to pick out her own thing this year. Actually, at the store she saw the same chicken costume she had the last two years and wanted that one, but I had to put my foot down on that. And then I saw the burger costume, fell in love, and then fell in love again when I saw it was missing the pants - no biggie, she already had brown pants - so I could get it for 50% off. SCORE. Next, I had to convince Sody she actually wanted to be a hamburger...an interesting task since this is a girl who barely touches meat and has never tasted a hamburger in her life. (Her choice, not mine! Lest you all think I am forcing her to be vegetarian). She was a good sport about it. Burger it was. As for me and Joe and our condiments, that was done with felt and a glue gun and some plain t-shirts from Goodwill. Easy peasy.

We crammed a lot into our Halloween weekend, maybe too much: carnival at Sody's new preschool (yes, you heard that right, and more on this later - my baby is going to be starting preschool in a couple weeks!! I am freaking out!!!) and a parade in Piedmont and carving pumpkins (Sody was waaaaaaay into this this year) and cookie baking for work and of course, trick or treating. Her clear favorite in the treat race is lollipops, and we let her eat about sixteen of 'em on the night of Halloween. Now we just have to break her of the habit of asking for candy morning, noon, and night. Guess Mom and Dad need to help get rid of the goods so it's out of sight, out of mind. A sacrifice we are forcing ourselves to make.