Wha'chu talkin' 'bout?

Some of the jibber-jabber Eden gets caught up in makes me wonder if they've been reading passages of the Bible with anscestries to the kids while I'm in bible study at Pinelake Church.
For example:
In the midst of a whole lot of other nonsense, I hear,
"...Jacob and Harley and Orly and Hallah and Aisley and Daisa and Shallah, Hava, Nayah, Haman, Ming-Ming, Baisha, Bala, Talah or Dolce


but, Joseph and God..."  and the story continued.

In another random moment, she told me, "Jesus helps Dolce to come and live in her heart.... with the Wonder Pets."
You just never know what she's going to come up with.
By the way, all this was not just said, but sung into her microphone as she paced around in circles in the sunroom.

A Conversation

"Sara.... Sara!"

"Call me 'Mama' please, not 'Sara.'"

"No, I call you 'Sara.'"

"Eden, don't argue with me.  That means when I say something, don't say something else back to me.  Just say 'Yes Ma'am,' ok?"

No response.

"Eden, say 'Yes Ma'am.'"

"Yes Ma'am!"

"Do you even know what you're saying 'Yes Ma'am' about?  Do you know what arguing is?"

"Yes. I want some chocolate."

Arielle Plays Peekaboo

Do You Hear What I Hear?

I've been drilling Eden about listening.
Half the time, she has no idea what I've just said to her.  She'll ask a question.  I'll answer her.  She'll ask the question again.  Sometimes, I'll just tell her again (although that's getting more rare as I get more tired of this process). Sometimes, I'll ask her what I just said and she'll sheepishly tell me.  So then I ask her why she feels the need to ask a question she clearly knows the answer to.  I just get a look.  Sometimes, I'll ask her what I just said and she has no idea.  That's where the listening lecture begins.

Like this morning, for example.

I told her she had to wait until Arielle was done with her milk before I gave her breakfast.  I could tell she was very anxious because she kept hovering around Arielle in the highchair and giving me updates on her progress.
She let me know Arielle was all done and I told her she still needed to wait because I was going out of the room to do something and would be right back.  Next thing I hear is her saying, "All done Arielle."  I knew that meant she was taking her bottle away.  I quickly walked back in to stop her, told her to give back the bottle and asked her what I had just said before I waked out.
No answer.

"I'll tell you what I said, Eden.  I told you to WAIT for me to come back.  I didn't tell you to take Arielle's bottle away."

Fast forward 10 minutes later in the bathroom.

Eden asks me if she can look at herself in the mirror on the back of the door.  I say, "Sure you can.  Just push the door to where you can see the mirror."
She puts her hands behind her back and looks at me, asking the question again with her eyes.  Don't you think she wasn't.  I have a clear window to her brain and almost everything that goes through it.  It's Mom telepathy.

"Eden, can you tell me what I just said to you?"

"Don't push the door."

sigh. See what I mean?

Tickle Monster

Eden did something today or said something... I don't even remember what, that irked me... more than irked me... made me steamed.  I mean really steamed.  And in the moment of wanting to throw something or kick something, I decided to attack her.  I let out a Mama bear roar and then...
I attacked her viciously with tickling.  I tickled her and tickled her.  I took pleasure in seeing her crumple helplessly to the ground, incapable of giving me any impish looks, defiant stares or devilish grins.  Incapable of anything but uncontrollable twitching, snorting and writhing.
Then I stopped, my desire to maul something sated.

Later today, I got that "look" on my face because I was getting to be an unhappy camper again.  She was doing something or saying something that was getting on that same last nerve.
She recognized the look and asked:

"Mommy, you going to tickle me now?"

Waaaaaaait . . .

Eden came up to me just now with her snack tupperware container that she discovered in her toy box.  She asked me to put cereal in it.  Since she just finished breakfast a half hour ago, I said no.  I told her she could pretend there was cereal in it.
She asked me to put Kix in the cup.  Of course, I said no.
She tried another tactic.

Eden: "Wait for to put Kix in the cup."  This is her way of saying, "What you really mean isn't that I can't have them at all, but that I just have to wait a few minutes, right?"

Mommy:  "No.  I'm not putting anything in that cup any time soon."

Eden, nodding her head to help the cause:  "Wait for Kix."

Mommy:  "Nope.  You can pretend."

For her final attempt, she placed the top of the cup over my eye, pressed it against my head and very purposefully said, "Waaaaaaaaaait for Kix..."  She left the cup there to allow the implanted thought to travel through my eye deep into my brain.  Then, a few seconds later, she took the cup off my head and looked at me.

I looked at her.

Sorry honey, you're no jedi.

Just Some Pictures I Love of a Girl I Love