I like you, two

So far I'm really loving two years old. She's really turned into a proper little person. The big notable change beyond her ability to speak us now she has an imagination. I love the fact i can converse with her. It makes things so much easier now that she can tell me what she needs or wants. But mostly, it's the things she comes up with... concepts so off the wall, or strangely logical or shockingly wise for her age. It's just a delight to see what she comes up with next.

She can now remember and sing songs, or at least sing her interpretation of what she thought she heard days or weeks after hearing them. She doesn't always get the words right. Actually the times she gets the words wrong and makes up the replacements is what amuses me most (maybe more on that later).

This fall she went though a phase of asking us to Sing about x. Just picking some subject or person she knows about and asking us to sing about it. Sing about mamma, Sing about dinner, Sing about three. The weirdest one was Sing about doubt...

I don't think i can do that.
I don't think this will work.
This song won't be good enough
and I'll feel like a jerk.

I have to concede making up songs off the top of my head really kept me on my toes.

Shortly after her birthday she started making up names for her toys. So for the first time it wasn't just L and I naming toys for her. She has four rubber ducks. The big one is Mamma Duck. The blue one is Butterfly Duck. The one dressed as a pirate is Pirate Duck. And the small plain yellow one is Swings and Park.

Now she makes up names for her toys and various unnamed characters in books all. Most are sensible: Charlotte (sometimes Scarlet) the doll, Basil the dragon, Bartholomew the wraith. Some are weird, like Poad, Saddy, Floop and Queen Bee – people in a video game.

There's a bit of damage to the bathroom door from where we had to pry it from the wall to free her finger. She saw it a few months ago, pointed to it and called it dragon teeth. I have no idea where she got that from. But it does kind of look like it could be. This was the first time she came up with something so completely out of nowhere, I was very surprised when she said it.

One favourite of mine is her interpretation of the title of the book Don't Wake the Bear, Hare. She's not come across the word "hare" before, and she knows the book is about a rabbit, so she calls it Bunny, Don't Wake the Bear Here.

In retrospect I also really liked 6 months. That was realty the last time we could sling her up and take get with us and she'd stay quiet and calm the whole time. We could still go to diners and pubs without trouble and she'd yet to get us kicked out of anywhere.