My daughter is odd

I haven't done a kid post in a while.  For the most part, frustrations about being a parent are easing.  I don't know who started this whole "complain about your kid as a 2 year old" thing, but I disagree.  I think having a toddler is freaking fantastic, especially when you compare it to having a colicky infant who didn't eat or sleep for a year.  Sure, we're sluggish around this potty training thing.  But on the whole, I love having a toddler.  Why?

She's starting to develop word play.  She was standing on the rocks in our yard, swaying back and forth.  "Look, I'm rocking on rocks!"

She will take nasty tasting medicine because she understands that it will make her feel better.  

She's cautious.  This kid isn't destructive.  I don't get it, but I'll take it.


She's thorough.  One big mistake was to buy clearance valentines for next year while she was with me.  She has been obsessed with getting us to let her open them.  She wants to give her friends yet more valentines.  Well, we told her if she peed on the potty that she could open them.  And guess what?  Yep!  Pee!  She took those valentines to school, tore all 32 valentines on the perforated lines, put a sticker (or 2 or 5) on each valentine, signed her name, and did a repeat valentine's day in March at school.   

She will tell you if anything you do is "wrong."  Everything has its place.  Not that I at all understand where she got that from...

We don't have pillowcases anymore.  Apparently pillowcases are perfect stand-ins for mats.  She will take off pillowcases (ours), and place the "mats" down.  We are forbidden from acquiring the pillowcases back while she's awake.  By the time she's asleep, we're too tired and pillowcase-less we are.

The hair, oh, the hair.  I have straight hair.  Along the lines of being perfectly cool with being an only child, I was also perfectly cool with having straight hair (except in the mid-80s when perms were "in").  It's easy to take care of straight hair.  Sure, it's frustrating to have any attempts at curling it to literally fall flat, but there are worse things in the world.  I have no idea how I got a little girl with Shirley Temple ringlets crossed with a white girl Afro crossed with Albert Einstein.  She has so MUCH hair.  Some of it does ringlets, but the other contingent just stands on end.  Add in some cowlicks and frizz, and I have no idea what to do with it.  Had she been a boy, there would be two words: buzz cut.

The ominous skeleton drawings.  In her cubby today there was a curious pile of about 30 drawings.  (Cue spooky music)  It is almost as if she was drawing a whole herd of skeletons, which is kind of creepy.  Or maybe a lot creepy.   She says they're bugs.  I think the bugs might be a cover for her starting to practice voodoo.

There were a LOT more than this, but I think you get the idea.