Pepita

Love Like a Lotion

Frances learned a new song in school.

Protest Song

Frances likes to make up songs and poems. Usually, they’re pretty self-explanatory: “Chocolate is happy chocolate is gay. / Chocolate is love on this hot summer day.” But this song… I don’t know. It seems to have a political component. It might also be about reproductive health. Decide for yourselves.

“Barack Obama Was His Name-O”

Two Scenes from Last Night, or, What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?

1.

Frances, Ted, and I were reading bedtime stories. Frances starting jumping on the bed, and then she landed on my belly in a move known as a “knee drop” in professional wrestling. Frances has done this before, and I have asked her to stop, as it is unpleasant. I asked her yet again to please desist. She apologized and settled down for another story.

A few minutes later, she starting jumping again, and advancing in the direction of my prone form. I said, “Frances, if you bounce on me one more time, I am going to freak out.”

She replied, “I’m not bouncing on you. I am bouncing toward you.”

Ted and I are pretty sure that she’s going to be a lawyer when she grows up.

2.

Ted and I have been trying to regain some control over a nighttime routine that has, of late, been stretching into the wee hours of the morning. So, when it’s bedtime, Frances goes in the crib and stays there. Frances has a substantial and sophisticated arsenal of requests designed to get her out of bed again. Last night, she began by telling me that she needed a drink of water. I said, “Sure, I’ll bring you a cup of water.”

She said, “No! I want to get it!” and started to weep when this demand was denied.

I brought her a cup of water, and said, “Here’s your drink of water.”

Still sobbing, she said, “I’m too cry-y to drink it.”

I said, “OK. You don’t have to drink it. I’ll just take it back to the bathroom.”

The tears stopped, and she said in a calm and persuasive voice, “Well, you could just wait until I’m done crying.”

“All right,” I replied, “You have until the count of three to stop crying.”

She considered for a moment before asking, “How about ten?”

Now I’m thinking that maybe she’ll be an actor on a show about lawyers.

Sound It Out

Last night, for the first time, Frances sounded out a word. That word was “butt”.

Goodbye, Pacifier

Yesterday was Frances’s last day with the pacifier. Ted and I had been preparing for this for some time. We got a lot of advice—many variations on the Paci Fairy. I experimented with the idea of using pacifiers as a form of currency that Frances could exchange for things she wants, but she was more interested in keeping the pacis. When Ted’s sister-in-law had a baby, Frances expressed interest in sending her pacis to cousin Kathryn, so that’s the plan we went with.  We also stopped buying new pacis to replace lost pacis, so Frances has been clinging to her last remaining pacifier for weeks.

Given that Ted and I are fully aware that Frances doesn’t see us as authority figures, we enlisted the help  of our dentist and dental hygienist. They explained to Frances that her teeth won’t grow in correctly if she keeps using pacifiers now that she’s three. Frances didn’t seem all that concerned, really, but she did hand off her paci to the hygienist, and she dropped it in the envelope for cousin Kathryn.

Frances was a champ at the dentist’s office, but she became a bit unraveled at the post office. When she got upset about shipping off her pacifier, she—of course—wanted her pacifier. Finally, we got her to put it in the mail box and send it off to California.

Naptime was rough. Bedtime was a little easier. Frances suggested to me that, while she understands she can’t have a paci now that she’s three, maybe she could have it back when she’s four. I assured her that we’d ask the dentist when she turns four, and she was satisfied with that response.

Ted and I are doing everything we can to make this transition easy for her, while respecting and acknowledging the fact that it really is quite hard, and we’re both very proud of her.

[PHOTO ESSAY HERE.]

Frances turned three.

We had a party. It was a rager. Photos here.

Bedtime Story

I was rocking Frances to sleep last night when she started reciting the alphabet. She stopped at F, and I asked her, “What starts with F?”

“Frances!” she replied.

She laid her head back down on my chest, and I kept rocking. I thought she drifting off when I heard her say, in a drowsy whisper, “And fart.”