For months, I’ve been trying to get little EC to state her favorites: favorite food, favorite color, favorite song…but the concept of favorite just didn’t click. Today, though, as she got herself dressed for a nap (she can do all the articles of clothing herself now, except for the arms of her shirts), she declared that she needed “slippery socks” (those without rubber gripping pads on the bottom) to sleep, and that “rainbows are my favorite slippery socks”. So she pulled out the purple socks with rainbows, declaring she had found her favorites. And with that, and I having forgotten that I’d been trying to get her to pin down favorites, she did it herself.

She’s also getting quite good with letters. She identifies them all by name, and for a handful she knows their sounds reliably. And for a select couple, she can say which words begin with those letters. G, and M, and sometimes D. Whenever there’s the opportunity, I quiz her on what letters certain words start with, or what words certain letters might start; and she’s always very proud of herself for getting one right.

Just before I put her down to sleep, she’s usually so tired that it’s easy for her to break into a crying fit. Today was no different, but I couldn’t tell what it was that set her off this time. So I just hugged her until she had enough air to talk, and then asked her what happened. “Mr. McGregor scared you!” She’s largely eradicated “you” from references to herself at this point, unless she’s particularly distraught, so in this case I knew that Mr. McGregor had been quite a villain. But since it had been at least an hour since we’d discussed anything about The Tale of Peter Rabbit, it appears that she’s developed some kind of empathy for Peter, and it has stuck with her that there is a difference between “good guy” and “bad guy” and that bad guys are scary. I hope to be able to talk her out of being scared of her imagination, though: to date, we’ve been mercifully free of fear when it comes to the dark, the drain, and other classics. Just blenders and doctors scare her. And also, maybe I need to re-narrate the story for her, so that she can see that it is really Peter who is the villain, and Mr. McGregor is the victim.

Time to go clean the bathrooms. They’re all smeared with hand soap, because that’s been the new fun game while I’m not looking recently.