January 8, 2012

This kid blows my mind

This kid blows my mind. I’ve been writing snarky comments on my Facebook wall about parents of “gifted” children, but naturally, I do suppose that Harriet is the funniest, most brilliant child the world has ever seen before. Basically, she is Jesus (who we know all about from the Dick Bruna Christmas Book).

Though we’ve had to stop borrowing Thomas DVDs from the library because Harriet is too obsessed, and has been talking about the episode where James fell in the mud for three weeks now. And she informed us that she’s changed her name to Harriet Tank Engine, her baths are “wash-downs” and she calls her bed her “round-house”. But it’s not just all cartoons, she’s also political: yesterday when The House came on CBC radio, Harriet listened for a moment and said, “They’re talking about Canada. I live in Canada.”

She can recite Hey Diddle Diddle, Little Miss Muffet, The Owl and the Pussy-Cat and Night Before Christmas. She’s totally potty trained, except that she’s afraid of toilets so still has to wear diapers outside of the house. She likes to coax us into playing her games by telling us, “It’s very good game, very fun” but then she yells at us when we do it wrong and the game is always pretty boring. Every day around 1:00, she decides it’s naptime and goes to bed on her own accord (which has only started since we ditched the crib), sleeps for two hours, then gets up and sings or reads in bed for about a half an hour more. She sleeps until 9:00 on the weekend. She eats sushi, pesto, felafels, blue cheese and hummus, and is quite particular about where she gets her croissants. (This is the kind of thing we parents brag about who have too much disposable income for our own good, and live in the city.)

She loves Chicken Pig and Cow, Katie-Morag, Curious George, The Berenstain Bears, Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel, Jon Scieszka’s Trucktown books, the letter H, chocolate, watching DVDs, getting mail, and when it’s garbage day. She displays that marvelous imagination that seems to be innate in all her peers (and where does that go? Why do so many of us lose it?) . She likes to help me bake and sometimes is even helpful. Lately, she’s been asking for definitions of words she doesn’t know: “What means ‘on purpose’?” This afternoon she wondered why there was only one cloud in the sky, and if it was lonely.

So yes, now she is two (and a half!), clever as clever. And I really hope she is two forever and ever. Really. Because there’s never been anything quite as marvelously good. We love her.