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.