Veronica just walked up to me and said, appropo of nothing, "Pita thought I was a kitty cat."

"Really?" I said with a grin. "Why do you think that?"

"'Cas she licked me an'...an'....I was de mommy."

"Oh, so she thought you were the mommy kitty cat?"

"Yeah," Veronica said, and added rather vehemently, "I'm not the mommy! I'm not a kitty cat, I human!"

I'm about to bust out laughing at this point, and she continued,

"She think I a kitty cat 'cas...'cas friends."

"Oh, she thought you were her mommy kitty cat because she was your friend?"

"Yeah. She my friend."

This was the cutest thing...and her pediatrician had poo-pooed my notion that Veronica would ever miss Pita, saying "she'll forget the cat in a week or two." Pita died September 2005. Yet another reason I say "FORMER" pediatrician.

Veronica reached a milestone I never did: Her first Easy-Bake Oven cake. Yeah, I did most of the work, but she stirred the batter and decorated it with colored sugar. Then we ate it. It tasted like a cookie, not a cake, but she was so proud. And frankly, so was I:

Then last week, Jason had Veronica a couple evenings, resulting in a haircut and a trip to the bead shop. When Veronica got home, she just had to pose for some pictures while dancing and making up songs as she went along:

Wow. Can this kid pose. I don't remember being this big of a ham.

The song very well may have been her version of "It's a Small World":

It's a small whirl after all,

It's a small whirl after all,

It's a small whirl after all,

In a one-horse open sleigh.

Oh, my, I have a card on my hands.

My little Veronica can be so sweet. Like when I showed her that I purchased new bath paints for her over the weekend, she exclaimed, "Oh, thank you, Mommy!" so sincerely that you'd think I gave her the world instead.

Which makes last night's session of diva poses, all done with a giggle, even funnier:

These are the best of the 14 or so pictures taken. After every one or two, she wanted to see herself on the camera, then ran off to grab another prop. Good heavens. What am I going to do with this kid? (And yes, that's washable magic marker on her hands. I can't exactly remember the explanation she gave for that, but it was quite compelling.)