Not much to say, just a great day. Went to Easton, where Veronica was enthralled by the fountain, where we sat and observed while eating Chinese food. Then we hit Barnes N' Noble, where Veronica found a Dora book and a Teen Titans coloring book. In between, she held Jason's hand and ran with him - her favorite thing to do. And now she's playing with her crayons and watching Teen Titans.

Nothing much, like I said. Just a very good day. :-)

Well, this is new:

Veronica is in her bedroom with Jason, playing with her Fisher Price Little People and assorted other little toys. She is making her toy talk to Jason's toy, which is nothing new. What IS new is that she's using different voices now for the toys she's playing with.

Huh.

We finally found out the meaning of Veronica's hilarious fascination with the door in the bathroom. I was walking in the other night while Jason was giving her a bath, and managed to hit my arm on the door so hard that I almost yelled a very foul profanity right there in front of her. The door reverberated and Veronica laughed, but for some reason she thought I had ran into it with my rear end rather than my arm. Hence the references to pee-pee (which you do in the bathroom) and my butt. She put it all together last night: "Dat a funny door! Bump Mommy in da butt! Dat hurt! Dat hurt the door!" and laughed uncontrollably.

The bad news: This revelation came at about one in the morning. Veronica has a new habit of not wanting to go to bed, or at least, not sleeping once there. She wants to talk in a stream-of-consciousness fashion involving quotes from Avatar, things said at school, and of course, funny stories about Mommy bumping her butt. She will cry. She will ask for water, and milk, and juice. She will ask for applesauce, because she knows we'll give that to her because she doesn't eat enough to keep a bird alive. (She calls it "bupplesauce"; she can say it properly, we've heard her do it, she just prefers not to.) She'll announce "I have boogers!" so Jason will come in with a Q-Tip and a tissue. Here it is, 45 minutes after she's been in bed, and Jason's in there now as she tries cajolling him into getting up and playing with her Fischer Price Little People some more. She's jumped out of bed and tried running around the house.

It's awful because she knows exactly how to press all our buttons. She'll call our bluff if we threaten her - take my bear and my dolls away? "I no want bear!" Out of bed, the bear flies. Anything you can think of, she resists. It's a fight to do ANYTHING.

I need to go now, as the situation in the other room is escalating. Good freakin' lord. I love Veronica dearly, but this is getting old.

Um, our kid's been giving us some head scratchers lately.

Tonight, after a good round of her hiding under her blankets and urging us to find her, Veronica started giggling uncontrollably and saying that the following things were funny: The bathroom door, Mommy's pee-pee, and Mommy's butt. Aw gee, what every woman wants to hear. :-P She kept running in and out of the bathroom, laughing so hard that she could barely breathe. The only semi-logical explanation we could come up with - other than my butt apparently looking rather damn funny - is that she thinks it's funny that we close the door when we pee and poop. After all, they don't do it at her school, being that the little kids are potty-training. And we don't close the door when we change her diaper. Still, Jason and I are looking at each other saying, what the hell?

I think the whole thing can be summed up by this morning. Veronica was being quite precocious, so Jason asked "Veronica? Are you smart?" She grinned and ran into her closet, and we then heard a thud, followed by "Ow! Dat a wall!" So I think we got the answer to our question. At least, the answer she wanted to give us.

Well, Veronica had some synapses firing last night.

We're in the car and Jason and I are in mid-conversation when Veronica pipes up from the backseat with this query:

"What you thinking about, Mommy? My bear?"

I stifled a laugh. "No, Veronica, I wasn't thinking about your bear."

She then goes on to describe said bear to me, mostly using the word "yellow" as that's what color said bear is.

We stop to get some food. Veronica gets out of the car and wonders where we're going.

"We're going to McDonald's" Jason said. To which Veronica replied:

"Quack quack here."

(sigh)

We're playing in her bedroom later and she keeps turning her lamp on and off. I tell her to stop that. "It's not a toy," I say. To which she points around the room and responds, "No, dat not a toy. Dat a lamp. Is dat a toy? Dat a princess. Yes! Dat a toy! Is dat a toy? Yes!"

I just look at her. "You're messing with me, aren't you?" I ask. And she doesn't respond.

I know I'm forgetting a bunch, as my kid was on fire with the amusing thoughts last night, but I'm sure Jason will remember a few and hopefully they will be posted, before we both forget entirely.

So tomorrow is Veronica's friend Audri's third birthday. Audri's parents decided to have their parents and other family members come in today for a little party. Being that they didn't want a big party with a houseful of little kids, they told Audri she could have one friend come over to play. And who did Audri say she wanted to visit?

You guessed it. Veronica.

So Alicia and Ryanan (Audri's mom and dad) had us drop her off at the house today, from around 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. The girls played. They watched a Strawberry Shortcake movie. They ate Happy Meals and ice cream and potato chips. And they had a wonderful time.

We like Alicia and Ryanan a lot - they're about at the same place in life as we are, plus they're only planning on one child too - but we're really happy that Veronica has such a good little friend. We didn't have friends like that at this age. It is so sweet to see them play together and see the obvious affection they have for one another. We'll have to have Audri over here. And as we left today, Veronica turned around, pointed, and said, "That Aud-dray house!"

"Yes, it is," Jason said, "and I think you'll be seeing it a lot more now."

I sincerely hope he's right.

I cannot believe what Veronica said yesterday.

Jason had given her one of her gummy-candy vitamins, which she normally scarfs down immediately. Yesterday, however, she just held it in her hands and licked it. As this is a prime set-up for a gooey mess, Jason and I told her repeatedly to either eat it or throw it away.

Jason then says "Last time, kid: Eat it or throw it away, or I'm taking it away."

And she gave him a grumpy look, then looked down and said, "No, Daddy. I not a kid!"

What?!

Jason was a bit taken aback, although he instantly replied with "What do you mean, you're not a kid? You ARE a kid! Now you have to listen to me - eat it or throw it away!"

Good lord. I wasn't expecting THAT for another decade or so. "I not a kid." Veronica- you're still in DIAPERS, for crying out loud!

In addition to this little verbal gem are her comments upon watching the Superbowl last night. She liked the commercials with the guy who works with apes. She liked the Clysdale ads. And then we got to the one with Kermit the Frog. A recap: He's canoeing and hiking and climbing in the wilderness, while "It's Not Easy Being Green" plays in the background. Once he reaches his destination, a charcoal grey Ford SUV awaits. He walks around to the back, sees the plaque stating "HYBRID", and comments, "I guess it IS easy being green!" Yeah, yeah, typical ad. But not to Veronica. She instantly said "That car not green!" and looked at Jason, so confused. We had to laugh.

Her other commentary was during the halftime show. We were at Susan's condo, and as the Rolling Stones droned on, she looked at us and said "I wanna go home now." When you can't even capitvate a toddler, you need a better show. That's all I'm saying.

These have been her latest little gems. More when I get time and when she says them. :-)

I know, it's late. But I wanted to just take time to note that Veronica is growing up so much lately, and it's in the oddest way to try and describe. She just seems to understand so much more now.

One of the most heartwrenching examples recently was when we were trying to get her tucked into bed the other night. She hates being covered up, but it's been cold at night recently and she's been sick, so she really needs at least a little blanket over her. We'd tried all the usual things - "it's your bedtime, you need to RIGHT NOW, I'm taking that toy away if you don't get covered up," etc. (I hate the threatening but what else can you do?) So Jason tried to explain it to her truthfully. "We're trying to take good care of you. I don't want to be a bad daddy, and a bad daddy wouldn't cover you up, a bad daddy would let you get cold." Which is basically the truth. He finally said something about, "Do you think I'm a bad daddy?" And Veronica looked down and said, "No, Daddy, you not bad. I bad," and pointed to herself. I almost cried. We assured her that she is not bad, but that she needed to cover up, which she did. We let her pick out the blanket.

A less traumatizing example was her recent first (and so far, only) viewing of "Cinderella". Toward the end, when the duke brings the glass slipper to be tried on by all the maidens of the kingdom, each of the stepsisters claims it is her slipper. After the second one says this, Veronica looks at me solemnly and says, "That not her shoe. That Cinderella shoe." So I guess you have a pretty good timeline now as to when I had to explain to Veronica what a lie is. (Although she lies herself, the favorite being the denial that she has pooped. She wants to play, she wants to watch cartoons, she does not want to be interrupted by anything, least of all a diaper change. So, despire the little cloud of stench that follows her around the room, and the visual confirmation down the diaper that a dookie does exist, you ask her "did you poop?" and she says "Nooooo" and looks away, and tries to get away. Which, I guess, is another good example of what I'm trying to talk about.)

It's like she doesn't just understand what's right in front of her, but the concept of what's really going on. Does that make any sense whatsoever? I know I have a ton of other examples, but they fly right out of my head as soon as I think of them (plus I get interrupted frequently - sorry, my train of thought is easy to derail.) All I know is that we have to be particularly careful of what is said and done around her anymore, because we have no idea what's being stored in her head, what's sinking in and what she's doing with the information. We haven't been dealing with a baby for quite some time now. Only now, Veronica's making sure that we know it.

Thank god for Bambi.

Mom played the DVD for Veronica last week. Now, she'd never found it very interesting before, but apparently she changed her mind. Maybe Mom suggested it, and trust me, my mom can be very persuasive to the toddler set. Don't ask me how she does it.

Now Veronica's watched Bambi about a dozen times at least. Her favorite character is Thumper. She calls one of her toy rabbits "Thumper" now and stomps her foot on the floor when you ask her what Thumper does. But the best thing about her Thumper admiration is her memorization of what Thumper's mother reminds him about eating. Thumper says, "Eating greens is a special treat, It makes long ears and great big feet." Although he's obviously reluctant to go along with this, Veronica has adopted the phrase, walking around muttering "Eating grees a speh-shull tweet...Long ears, big big feet." So tonight I said "Do you want to eat some greens like Thumper?" and got her to eat quite a few green beans that way.

Bambi got my daugher to eat vegetables! And it's so much better than Cinderella (Disney princesses back in the day - bleh. Jason pointed out that Cinderella's a bit batty in the movie - talking to mice and making them clothes, singing to birds, good lord. He actually said "Cinderella's gone Bursar" but if you haven't read Terry Pratchett's Discworld series you won't get the reference. If you have, it's all the funnier.) So in summation, here's to Walt Disney animators for getting my kid to do something everyone else, for the most part, has failed at for quite some time.