"My legs are squiggly"

The blogging hiatus of almost a year means that I haven't captured some of my favorite Alex-isms.  The good news is that she is at the very highest end of verbal skills for a three-year-old.

The bad news is that she is at the very highest end of verbal skills for a three-year-old.  And that means that she's got an explanation or an excuse for everything, and sometimes she combines it with whining or wailing.  (Who am I kidding?  She almost always combines it with whining or wailing.)

Take mornings as an example.  I'm usually the first one up in the house, followed shortly thereafter by Alex.  That means that Alex awakens to Daddy sitting in the family room with a cup of coffee and the paper, with "Morning Joe" on television in the background.  As previous readers may know, Alex was a big fan of "Morning Joe," because "Mika looks like Mommy," and she liked that "Silly Willie."  (Apparently, though, the eponymous Joe Scarborough didn't even register with her.)

That was then, this is now.

Now, she'll see "Morning Joe" on the TV and cry, "I don't like the news any more."  (Sometimes that's coupled with an "I want to watch Mickey Mouse!")  Usually, I stand firm.  Usually, she gets distracted, either by something in her playroom or by a commercial -- a current favorite is the Walgreen's commercial with the various products falling on top of each other in Rube Goldberg style. 

But the "I don't like it any more" can get old.  "How about a cup of milk?"  "I don't like milk any more."  I call [balderdash] on that one.

I also call [balderdash] on the clearly fallacious claims, like when she is lying on the floor or the sofa and wants to be carried instead of walking on her own:  "I don't know how to walk!"  Or, my personal favorite, "I can't walk because my legs are too squiggly!"   This is a word she made up, meaning that she believes her legs are too squirmy and wiggly (squirmy + wiggly = squiggly) to effectively walk without assistance.

But today's Alex special suggests that we will be having a longer discussion.  "Mommy, when we leave Ella-Anne at Magda's house, can we get a little brother?" Uh, bug, we're not leaving Ella-Anne anywhere else -- she's here to stay.