Yes, She Kisses Her Mama With That Mouth

One reason the twos (ok, the almost-twos) are not so terrible: my girl and I can actually have a conversation. It goes something like this:

Me: How are you?
Muffin: Good.

It’s awesome. Sometimes she asks me how I am too. I’m pretty sure she’ll be in the gifted program.

Gogus became gogourt and eventually yogurt. People who are not me, the Canuck or Sally can actually understand what she is saying a good percentage of the time now, no translator necessary. “Daddy sleeping,” she’ll observe. You better affirm that yes, Daddy is in fact snoozing away, and quick, or she will repeat it over and over, louder and louder, until Daddy is no longer sleeping. She seems to get such a high from being understood, she refuses to let one single opportunity for validation pass her by. All day long I repeat what she says to me back to her like an obnoxious parrot. Muffin will also ask the same questions over and over in a bullheaded attempt to morph reality, as if she has not quite grasped the concept that "we have no more applesauce" is as true at 6:33pm as it is at 6:34pm, 6:36pm, and 6:37pm.

She's making great strides, it's true, but she still has a long way to go. One urgent area of focus: perfecting her pronunciation of "truck." You see where this is going, right? She loves trucks, and points them out every time she sees one, but it comes out as an exuberant "fuck!" every time. If it's a fire truck, you just get a stuttering variation: fa-fuck. "T-t-t-t-truck," I tell her. "T-t-t-t-fuck," she says back, looking pretty proud of herself. We frequently pass the fire station near our house on walks, and sometimes they invite us in to look at the rig. I don't dare stay long, because it's only a matter of time before she drops an f-bomb on one of New York's bravest.