Josephine has given us all new names. She is Silla. Sam is Poxcis, or Baby Pox. I am Fence, sometimes Mama Fence. And Daddy is Et (Aet). I can't even begin to know where these names came from, or why they have been so applied; all I know is that Princess Silla is, like most two-almost-three year olds, striving to dominate our lives and, indeed, reality as a whole with her formidable will.
That is, if she says something is so, it is so. "The wading pools aren't going away, they're coming back," she tells me, hearing me talk about the city's decision to remove the wading pools in our next-door park. "He doesn't want to go to sleep," she argues, when I move to put Sam down for a nap. And then we're reading a book about Dora and her cousin, Diego. "It's not her cousin, he her friend," Jo says.
"No, Diego is her cousin," I say, gently. I run my finger over the words in the book, and read aloud, "'...and Dora saw a familiar figure in the distance, her cousin Diego.'" See? Proof! I think.
Jo is undaunted. She copies me, runs her finger over the same sentence, and rewrites the book, pretending to read, "...and Dora saw a familiar figure, her friend Diego."
She contradicts everything we say. Sean actually tried to have a talk with her about it.
"Sometimes Daddy knows what he's talking about, Jo," he said. "And remember, Daddy and Mommy are on your side."
"I'm on MY side," Jo said, defiantly.
She also has been practicing taking photographs - see above. I got draped and stuffed with toilet paper and sat for my picture. My mother will recall the story of Pammy Denis with toilet paper on her head and see that everything comes full circle...
It's a testament to my love for my child that I submit to these exercises in the complete demolition of any aspiration toward sophistication I might have entertained pre-kid.
That I actually post these pictures is another issue altogether. Perhaps I am looking for sympathy. Or figuring that, no beauty queen, I can at least invoke a chuckle!
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