Thirty-Eight Months

Dear Persephone,

You’re thirty-eight months old today.

I knew this month was off to a good start when you told me your own version of an old knock knock joke. It was the old “orange you glad” joke which I’d told you a month or two before. An old friend from college had reminded me of it. Here’s your version.

Knocky knock.
Who’s there?
Carrot.
Carrot who?
Carrot you glad I didn’t say banana?

Clearly you got the structure but the pun eludes you.

Knocky knock.
Who’s there?
Tangerine.
Tangerine who?
Tangerine you glad I didn’t say orange?

I love that.

This was the first April Fool’s Day you’ve been able to appreciate. You proved remarkably easy to fool. I could point to the window and say, “Look! It’s the abominable snowman!” And you’d look every time. You loved it, though. We even cooked up a plan to tell the people at your daycare that your lunchbox was full of poop. But you were overcome by modesty at the last minute.

You had some pieces of tomato on your plate one night. You said one looked like a wheel, one looked like a rainbow, and one looked like a Muse’s shoe.

You are beginning to ask more interesting questions. For example, a few weeks ago, a sermon came on our house mix and you asked me who was talking. When I said “a Christian preacher,” you thought for a minute and then asked, “What’s a Christian?” I replied, “Someone who follows Jesus,” which led to some more interesting questions. Now I’m bracing for the inevitable: “What is God?” I’m sure you’ll ask that some day soon. Perhaps I’ll draw inspiration from a recent blog post I read and say something like, “God is an idea that helps people understand the world around them.”

Another question you asked would seem easier: “What is Google?” But actually this one stumped me. How to explain Google in terms a three-year-old can understand? It’s complicated.

For a few weeks you had an intense craving for stories. It seemed you were asking me to tell you a story from the moment you woke up until bedtime. As soon as I’d tell you one, no matter how good or bad it was, you’d ask for another. But this seems to have subsided at last.

Your speech grows more sophisticated daily, but you still have lots of funny expressions. For example, You say “talk it” instead of unmute. Like when we have the TV on, and we mute the commercials, and the program comes back on but the audio is still muted. “Talk it!” Which makes sense. For what it’s worth, my spellchecker doesn’t recognize unmute either.

You remain a great lunar enthusiast. Last week, when playing with your friend Lala, you noticed the moon was out and very nearly full. Lala said, “It’s the sun!” You hauled off and hit her in the face. It wasn’t a nice thing to do, obviously, and given that Lala’s nearly twice your size you are lucky you didn’t get stomped. But eerily enough it reminded me of my admonition a few months ago to “strike a blow for the moon.” Have you been reading my blog?

Sometimes you pretend that I’m the Big Bad Wolf. “Can you get me a glass of seltzer, Big Bad Wolf?” Then you’ll wave your wand and turn me into a prince or a king.

Best of all you have begun to spontaneously say things like, “I love you.” Just a couple days ago you came up to me while I was sitting on the deck and, without any prompting, you said, “When I grow up I want to be just like you, Dada.” You said it twice. Amazing.