R 35 Months

Dear R,

What a month! Of course the big news is that your Grammie and Grampie now live close enough to visit with several times a week. This means lots more attention for you! It's great. You've helped Grampie plant a garden and enjoyed quite a few meals over at their house in their high chair.

You know that your birthday is coming up in June and it's already a topic of conversation just about every day. You've started planning out what kind of cupcakes you want to have and you sing yourself happy birthday several times a day.

You have become very interested in two kinds of stories: stories that we read to you and stories that we make up. When I make up a story, I usually start like this: "Once upon a time, there was a little girl/boy named . . ." and then I dramatically pause so that you can fill in the name for me.

Sometimes you insist that I come up with a name. Most of the time though, you want to come up with a name yourself. I've told stories about Marisa (the name you've given to most of your dolls at one point or another), about you, about RUS, about Grandpa, but lately, as in the last two weeks or so, you've wanted a lot of stories about "Jack."

(Perhaps unrelatedly, you've also generally been insisting that just about all of the stories I tell be about little boys, and I've noticed that you almost always use the male pronoun when describing your stuffed animals and other similarly androgynous/anthropomorphic items. The feminist in me is only slightly worried at this trend: there have to be good stories about little girls, too! And a doorknob can just as easily be a girl doorknob as a boy doorknob, right?)

Anyway, I've just about exhausted my repertoire of stories about boys named Jack (your favorite of course is "Jack and the Beanstalk" and every thump we've heard or made lately gets turned into the giant walking and ready to yell out "Fee Fi Fo Fum!"). That doesn't stop you from asking me and Daddy several times a day: "tell me a story about Jack!"

We've told you about Jack-be-nimble, about Jack and Jill, about Jack Horner who sat in a corner, and we coincidentally happened to check out not one, but TWO different library books (randomly, as I rarely read the books before grabbing them, I just check for appropriate amount of words per page and interesting pictures) centered on little boys named Jack when we went a week or so ago. This was very thrilling to you, as you pointed out JACK! It's JACK! when we first read the books.

As we've told you more and more stories, you've started to get really involved in sharing in the telling. Sometimes, for example, especially when I am making up a story about someone, you will jump in and start telling the story too. I'll be telling you about how someone is walking down the street and you'll chime in that he is going to the restaurant! Or I'll start saying that someone woke up in the morning and you'll say, "and they woke up from nap and ate breakfast!"

Speaking of breakfast, after Daddy made chocolate chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast for Mother's Day you've been asking for chocolate pizza. You describe it in great detail. And when we have to--sadly--break the news to you that we're not going to have chocolate pizza, you excitedly suggest that "maybe we can have chocolate pizza at Grammie and Grampie's house!" I try to get you to make it in your own little kitchen but you insist that you can't, that only I can make chocolate pizza.

Oh, if you only knew how much I wish I really did know how to make chocolate pizza!

Love,
Mama