My little baby is not so little anymore.
She is big enough to say "I will ignore you" and "I won't sit on the potty, Mommy". She's old enough to ask us questions about who made the world and who will play with her toys when she is gone "to dead." She has started to care about what happens to Grendel when we aren't at home, and to feel homesickness, and talk about it. On day three of a recent trip to Ottawa, she said, as if continuing a conversation we had begun moments before "...and I may never see my cat Grendel again." She worries that he is alone while the rest of us go off to school or work.
She likes her sister, but has taken to saying that "Lillian is not my best friend anymore." I'm fairly certain that is something she picked up in her Big Kids room at daycare. She listens closely there, and doesn't always know how to make sense of or use what she hears and learns - she just commits all the details to memory and when she can fly the words or phrases by us, she does...and watches, and listens closely...and evaluates...tests...tests again...
I'm not sure when all of this happened, but I know it is still happening.
I took a day off work last week to spend time with Morgen and see what it is like to be a Big Kid at her daycare. She was in disbelief for much of the day, clingy, thrilled to have me with her to play the whole time. Some of her friends were happy to play with a Mommy too - one said "Are you going to stay?" and when I said "Yes" he asked "Why?" So I told him: "To see what you guys do over the day, and what it is like to be a big kid." He then rattled off the entire day's schedule, and then looked at me, probably to see if I would walk out the way I came. When I didn't, he asked if I would read him a book...and of course I did, gathering three or four more little people around or on me in the course of the story. (on a side note: What exactly is the deal with the Backyardigans? I really don't see the appeal.)
At the end of the day, when I asked Morgen what she liked about being in school, she said "Nothing." There is a character in one of her story books that says that to his family even when there is something serious to report. She gets a kick out of that, and whenever she says the word I always look twice. Is this one of her many story book allusions? Is it a serious answer? This time, I switched tactics.
"Morgen, is there a teacher at school that you really like? What do you like about your teachers?"
I waited for that simple word, the nothing, the negative, her favourite recourse when I start pestering her with questions. And then: "I like that you were my teacher, Mommy."
