A couple of months ago, Dee and I were at Super Target (where I now do so much of my grocery shopping because HOLY HELL is it well priced there) and passed by the newborn section. She spotted a bear rattle and {like she says about pretty much everything cuddly she lays eyes on} she announced: “Mommy, I want that bear.”
“Aw, you know what?” I told her – “those are for newborn babies. They have to stay here and wait for the babies to be born so they can cuddle them.” It was clear I was speaking her language. She raised her little chin, nodding and said “Oh, yeah…for BABIES.”
A few weeks later we were in another store, when Dee spotted some gardening tools that struck her fancy. “Mommy, I want that.” “Oh, no Dee” I began — “those stay here.” She looked at me very seriously: “Are those for babies?”
Sure, I thought. We’ll go with that.
And so it was that this idea that some things were for babies, and she was too big to need those things and therefore should be a big girl and leave them for the babies to have was born.
Cut to the mall play area not too long ago.
A little girl, about Dee’s age is looking at the fish tank with a pacifier in her mouth. Dee approaches.
“Mommy?” she asks in the least discrete whisper ever, scandalized…pointing a chubby finger directly in the little girl’s face… “IS THAT A BABY?”
I am naturally horrified. “No, Dee – we don’t point. She’s not a baby, she’s a little girl like you.”
The little girl just looks at Dee, blinking.
Dee’s not done though. “But she has a binky in her mouth. Binkies are for babies.”
The little girl promptly threw the offending binky on the floor as her Mom did a silent fist pump behind her. Still…I felt like I had to take my kid down a notch…she had, after all, taunted this poor girl into flinging her pacifier into oblivion.
“So?” I replied. “You suck your thumb.”
5 Replies to “Hip to Big Kid Stuff”