Rikki likes to swing and ride around on all sorts of conveyances … from this trapeze at her creative movement class to the carousel on the Washington mall to these fat monkey bars at a park in McLean (where we spent Thanksgiving, the last there before the Fines move to downtown DC).
She is also quite loquacious these days, and has the cutest things to say. Upon meeting a new candidate for childcare job, she said, "Is she going to babysitter me?" She frequently asks to play "baskerball," and so we have invented a game for the bathtub involving letters. The other day she said, "I like this house, mommy. I'm glad we're staying here." And then there was the time she told me she wasn't sleepy, only "resty."
There is a dog across the street that often scratches at the big picture window when we are driving up. She tells me it's her dog, and he misses her. For a while, she had a dog named Skesk. One day she was asking for a cat. I told her we couldn't have one because I'm allergic. A few days later, she woke up telling me, "I can hold real babies. Can you get me a real baby?" I asked her what we would do with the baby when she went to school. "Are you allergic to babies?" she wondered. "Then you can take care of it for me."
And then today, she gave me a real scare. I had no idea she crossed the hide-and-seek threshold of being able to hide silently without calling out to me. I had no idea she was even planning to hide. We were getting ready to go out, and all of a sudden I couldn't find her anywhere. I called her and got no response. I'd already opened the front door preparing to leave, and so I thought the worst, and starting running out on the sidewalk in both directions calling her name. No Rikki. Back in the house looking and looking, calling her name, dialing a friend's number, deathly afraid. Finally I heard her, "Mommy, it's okay. I'm here. You don't need to worry." She'd found a new hiding spot behind the couch. And had learned how to hide.
