I came home from work today to be greeted by Helen. At 21 months, she can act quite official. Today, she appeared as if she would like to be playing the role of official greeter and tour guide, but was drawn away by another task that was even more enticing.
"Momma, baby see!"
"Yes, Helen, I see the baby," I replied, thinking that she meant herself. That was a reasonable guess, since she usually refers to herself as baby and in fact have only heard her use the name "Helen" once. However, today, she clearly indicated that I was wrong.
"No, Momma. Baby PU!
Well, that seemed more serious, since PU (as in Pee-You) is how she communicates a stinky diaper. I checked, and she was clean.
"Momma, c'mon!" Out went her little hand, fingers wagging behind, in her favorite gesture and phrase.
I followed her up the stairs, to the bathroom. There, on the floor, she was in mid-operation. She had her favorite baby doll (Baby Diana, so named by Maggie years earlier, who is nearly as big as Helen is now) on the floor. The open box of wet wipes was next to them. Helen was vigorously wiping the "PU" from the baby doll. I was very glad that this PU belonged only to a doll, since the same wet wipe then proceeded to be used to wipe the floor, the wall, the bathtub, and everything in between. Helen is a very enthusiastic house cleaner once turned loose.
Later this afternoon, I tried to get Helen to put a bib on. I prefer that for any time that she is eating, but it seemed particularly appropriate since she was now eating somewhat runny yogurt. Helen, however, has recently decided that she is not interested in wearing bibs. The one we have with the best coverage unfortunately closes with velcro, which means it is as good as useless now. Helen rips it off immediately.
This day, though, I struck upon a winning solution. I suspected that she was starting to reject a bib because it seemed too baby-ish to her. I was wearing an apron, so I decided to try that with her. We have several very small kids' aprons in the cupboard, so I tried one out. She rejected the first, so I doubted my idea, but tried just one more. Wow! When she saw the yellow apron with the red and blue flowers, she held both of her arms straight out in front of her and waited to be dressed. Then, she sat looking at her lap, amazed. She kept muttering a word to herself, and later to me, that might have been "See!" or might have been "Pretty!" When I stopped replying to this word, she climbed down off her chair, spread the apron out in front of her, and repeated her word so that I would notice.
Umm, really Helen? A fashionista before two? Sorry, kiddo, you ended up in the wrong family for that. But, I guess we can try to find her a few "pretty" things if it matter that much. :)
