This kid... I've got quotes saved from her going back to when she was three. It's hard to believe this girl will be five in a couple of months, and it seems past time to do another installment of her personal quotable.
These pictures are some I snapped with my phone on a random morning way back in October, shortly before Molly gave herself a haircut and subsequently found herself with a necessary bob and bangs. She was playing dress up that morning, and dancing on the coffee table in between clowning around with her silliest faces. Just the best of times, being four...
Until pretty recently, "becksist" was breakfast, "mown" was how she said morning, and she was "soosty," not thirsty. She loved pocksasuhls, aka popsicles, all summer long, and declared it "soggy" anytime it was, in fact, foggy. She got confused a time or two and called a porcupine a "pine needle," a skunk a "stunk," and animals in general are still sometimes "amimals."
* * *
"I was reading a book and then the corner scratched me."
"Oh, did you get a paper cut?"
"No, I got a book cut."
* * *
Sadly: "I like chocolate cookies all the time. But I don't get to have chocolate cookies all the time."
* * *
Showing off her building block skills: "My tower is so good and so beautiful and so bigness!"
Waking and fussing at night: "Can you buckle me in Mama? Buckle me in with my blankets?"
Me: "It's time to take your clothes off and get ready for bed!"
Molly: "Take my toes off?!?!"
At bedtime: "I don't want to be in my bed or anything because I don't like that. I just like eating and being awake. I like two things! I like eating and playing. And I like Daddy and Mama kissin' me and huggin' me and squeezin' me. And I like eating food. That's all I like. I don't like going to sleep all the time."
Early one morning, slipping into bed beside me in just her undies: "Good morning Mama, I'm just having myself some naked belly time."
Hearing spring peepers last spring, Molly asked me what the sound was. I replied that it was frogs, but Molly was not convinced. "No, that's not a frog Mama because a frog says RIBBIT like that. So no, that is not frogs."
"I'm hungry! I'm hungry!" Then, unimpressed with the lunch offering: "What else can I have? You're not making anything very great for me to have so I guess I'm not gonna be healthy!"
"I have a headache on my back."
After watching a video of Nell playing her violin when she was younger, Molly asked, "Now can we watch a video of me playing the violin when I was older?"
Hmm... we all tried to explain the way in which time is linear and no such future video of an activity she has not learned existed. Molly was quite disappointed.
During Holy Week: "We need to pray for Jesus! We need to pray for Jesus because he's dead!"
"Maaaamaaa! Marie made me have a headache!"
"Oh, how did she do that?"
"She hit me in the head and that's how she made me have a headache!"
"I wanna grow big so I can cut things with knives."
Watching a staged performance of Die Walkure on YouTube one day: "This is a little bit creepy! I would not be in any of those places. Because a monster might come and stab my leg."
One day while, ahem, wiping her bottom, I sang absentmindedly, "You are my sunshine..." and Molly responded promptly, "Oh no Mama, don't sing beautiful things to me when I just did a yucky poop. It doesn't seem beautiful. It just doesn't seem right to me."
"How you make goldfish crackers is this: you take fish and you take gold and you stir it around and you put it in the fridge for a long time. That's how you make goldfish crackers."
"Mama, when I grow up can I touch hot things carefully like you can? Will I grow up tall? And then can I?"
Me: "Yes, you will grow up more and then you can! You'll learn how to do it carefully like I do."
Molly: "And when I grow up will you grow down and then I'll be the mama?"
Me: "No, I won't grow down but you'll grow up... people only get older, they don't get younger."
Molly: "Oh, so then will we have two mamas?"
I told her that if she grew up to be a mama some day, that would make me a grandma, and she found this curiously hilarious.
* * *
With a happy, contented sigh: "I'm so fed up!"
*pause*
"That means everything is beautiful."
Bedtime conversations:
Molly: God is with me, right? But why can't I see him in the room?
Me: Yes, God is with us everywhere but we can't see him.
Molly: But what shape is his head? I mean what does he look like? Is his head a circle?
Me: We don't know what God looks like.
Molly: But maybe you could show me a picture on your phone or your computer or something.
Reading a little children's book about animals, I pointed to a picture of a turkey, its tail feathers all spread out, and asked, "What animal is that?" Uncertainly Molly responded, "...a helicopter?"
On a long car ride Molly asked, "Hey Daddy? Could you reach back here and put your sweet sweet hands on my little feet?"
Bringing me a glass of water, for which she apparently found my "thank you" inadequate: "You should give me hundreds of diamonds for being nice to you today and bringing you this water. I mean, hundreds of pennies. Or nickels."
"Mama, I want you to help me find a dress to wear today."
"OK Molly, shall we find you a beautiful dress?"
"No, I want a beautiful beautiful beautiful dress."
OK then!
To a babysitter who evidently read with less inflection than Molly is accustomed to hearing: "You read like you're sleepy." (Burn. Sorry, baby-sitter!)
"How does banana spell? A-T-R? M? S-T-A?"
"Mama, where do poops and pees live?"
"In your belly."
"But food goes there!"
"Yes, poop comes from food your body has digested and used up."
"What?! Poop is food?!??"
One morning I came downstairs to find mouse poop on my kitchen counter. The girls were appropriately horrified (as was I), and Molly mused, "Did the mouse come and poop on the counter while you were asleep?" "Yes, isn't that yucky?" "But you could have called the police you know, polices help people! They could get the mouse and put the mouse in prison!"
* * *
On a walk one day, Ree declared, "I'm looking for an acorn today, and maybe a pine cone." Molly responded, "I'm looking for money. Or maybe a diamond ring." (One of these children was successful in her endeavors, and the other one, not so much.)
Recently she referred to an ambulance as a "weeoooo" truck ("weeooo" being the sound she would make for a siren), and a whole week later she said with a tone of condescension to her former self, "When I was little I used to call ambulances weeooo trucks."
"Daddy likes spicy things. Daddy likes beautiful things. Daddy likes shiny things. Daddy likes meat and chips. Daddy likes everything except vegetables and centipedes and bugs."
"Mama? By the way? I like mansions."
Me too, kid. Me too.
Arriving home after a day at the beach last summer, Molly flopped down on the floor and declared, "I have a really hard life."
Looking out the window one morning, she called out excitedly, "MAMA! I see a teeny tiny TIGER in the street!!!" And in that moment I realized that maybe she's watched too much Wild Kratts and spent too little time with ordinary domesticated pets.
At bedtime:
Me: "Do you want me to sing you a song tonight?"
Molly: "No, thanks. But I want you to stay with me forever."
"What are we havin' for dinner?"
"Ravioli."
Suspiciously: "What is gravioli?!"
"Can you rewind me in the morning?" she sometimes used to ask, when she meant "remind." She doesn't say this anymore, and I sometimes find myself wishing I could rewind her, indeed, to these kinds of moments...
"Mama, I love you. Don't go any places in the mown (morning) time. Don't go any places at night. Don't go any places any of the days. Stay here at home with me forever."
"I love you super much," she says to me sometimes.
We love you super much too, Margaret Elizabeth.
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