The Gluestick Song

Lucy, Amy, and I were sitting at the table eating breakfast this morning and Lucy told me she made up a new song last night when she was "supposed to be sleeping". (Her actual words.) She told me the song is called "The Gluestick Song", and could she PUH-LEEZE-AH sing it for me? It came with a disclaimer that there would be some yelling in the song. I considered myself warned and told her to go ahead. I didn't get a recording of her singing her latest hit, but I did write down the lyrics:

Gluestick, gluestick,
Gluestick, gluestick!
If you wanna glue,
Just ask your Mom and Dad!
GLUESTICK!

Not only cute, but also sound advice. So next time YOU want to glue, please ask your Mom or Dad first.

The latest thing with Amy is her new word: "MINE!" Everything is hers--food, drink, toys, even Mom. The minute Lucy wants to sit in my lap, Amy is right there, pushing her out of the way and climbing in herself. When Lucy isn't on my lap, Amy couldn't care less about sitting with me.

And this morning, while I was trying to catch up on a few decorating and cooking shows that I TiVo'd, (I can't believe I actually used the past tense of a word that doesn't exist) Amy kept pointing at the corner with the TV center and saying "Dog!" I couldn't figure it out until she went over to the TV and touched it and said "Dog!" again. And then it hit me--she wanted to watch "Clifford, The Big Red Dog" that we record from PBS every morning. Ah! The joys of raising a 1-year-old who talks better than a few kids twice her age. She knows what she wants, and knows how to get it. That's for sure.

Lucy is almost 4, going on 18. She's pulling the "I'm grown up, now" routine, and that means she helps herself to turning on movies, getting herself a snack, and turning lights on and off. When I confronted her this morning about asking before she turns on a movie, citing the fact that it is my TV and my DVD player she's using to turn on the movie, she told me, "I can turn on a movie myself; I'm grown up now. I even have kids." I shot back, "Just because you are ABLE to turn on a movie doesn't mean you CAN, and pretend kids don't count toward your grown-up state of being."

We subsequently began to go back and forth about her pretend kids--"They're not pretend, they're real, Mom." "No, they're not." "Yes, they are." "No, they're not." "Yes, they are." You get the picture. At which point my brain begins to think, "Why am I having this discussion with a 3-year-old. I'm in charge here. Right?" So She sulked back to her watercolors at the table, and sat there for a few minutes before she came to me and said, "Mom, can I turn on a movie, please?" I won. This time.

It doesn't help that she's incredibly tall for her age, the oldest child in the family, not to mention extremely intelligent. I'm probably not supposed to say things like that about my own kids, but I have to tell the truth. She IS smart, and I won't deny that I had a hand in that. We've worked with her a lot, and it shows. It's also coming back to bite us in the butt. Daily.

Here are some new pictures!