One post at a time for the events of the past few days. Right now, a post about last night.

Veronica has quite the knack for stalling her bedtime. Every night she comes up with new and more clever ways of doing so. Last night she sat up in bed, still wearing the little sun hat she'd been wearing most of the day and holding her yellow bear, and wove a story before me. It went a little something like this:

Bear play peek-a-boo. He wake me. Audri smack him. I said no, bear! That not nice! Bear went outside. He went to the car. He sit in my seat! Audri try to get him. The door locked. We need Mommy to open the door. Mommy, open the door! Bear scared. He hear thunder. He cry. I say awww, poor widdle bear. Bear try to fight me. He got bigger. He turn into monster. He no want to turn into monster. He want to turn into people. I said no, bear! No turn into people! He got smaller. He no turn into people.

This went on for almost thirty minutes. At one point Jason asked her to take off her hat. She broke the "narrative," as it was, to say "NO, Daddy! Not 'til waiter! I talk to Mommy now!"

It was priceless. As her story went on, with me nodding and encouraging her and saying"What happened next?", Jason was on the floor trying to keep from busting out laughing. I had a hard time of it myself. Apparently the storytelling wore her out, as she fell asleep less than a minute after her head - finally sans hat - hit the pillow.

Frankly, Jason and I are just amazed at her coming up with her own original story that way, at this age. There was more to it as well; those were just the bits I remembered, the highlights, as it were. The bear and Veronica and Audri did a lot of other things too. It was quite clever, at any rate, and a definite surprise. I wish I could convey the sound of her little voice and her animated facial expressions and her gesticulations while she told the tale. It made me smile all day to think about it. I think it will for quite some time.

More cutesie things later, as a lot of little anecdotes have taken place in the past couple days.