Don’t like it

Eirinn’s new, over-used phrase du jour is “My don’t like it.”  But she pronounces it with some indecipherable drawl.  It is “My don’t loyk it” to be exact.  Also, on occasion, “My don’t loyk it.  Any.  More.”  We’re pretty sure what she means to say is “My don’t want it” because since she started using this phrase a couple of weeks ago, she ‘no likes’ the following, among many other random things:
pants

stripey socks

non-stripey socks

shirts with a turtleneck

shirts with buttons

shirts with zippers

shirts with sleeves

shirts with sleeves rolled up

her pink coat

her other pink coat

her pink mitts

her other pink mitts

her boots

food, including that which she has already consumed a good deal of

drinks

movies that she asked to be played

tv shows which were her favourite less than five minutes ago

hugs

kisses

tickling

Mommy

Daddy

Bosco

going to bed

blankets
All of this is somehow magically and similtaneously cute and unbearably frustrating.  We absolutely adore her new found accent (which includes pronouncing Donkey from Shrek “Don-kay”) and selfishly hopes she keeps it, despite the fact that she will be made fun of terribly when she enters school.  She’s tough; she can handle a bit of ribbing.  But on the other hand, it’s awfully tiring never knowing what will please her, even after she asks for something quite specifically. 

I’m sure most toddlers go through a phase like this.  Seeing how far their parents will go to please them and how far they can try their patience before it snaps.  Luckily for Eirinn her parents think she’s painfully adorable and little things like this, while not tolerated (she does get reprimanded for being impossibly finicky), are filed away under Things We Will Remember Fondly.

Some fruit should stay forbidden

This morning I was packing my snack suitcase (I have a lunch bag for snacks and a completely separate lunch bag for my actual lunch) and Eirinn saw me picking out mandarins.  Of course, Eirinn being Eirinn, asked for an “orange”, even though she knows and I know and she knows I know that she doesn’t like “oranges”.  Or mandarins.  But whatever.  I didn’t have time to explain that to her, so I just gave her one to play with.

First she threw it.  I told her it was not a ball.  She quickly turned this into a rule, shaking her finger, sing-songingly saying “Not a ball!”

Then she tried eating the rind.  Why her face didn’t screw up into a clenched little sphincter due to the bitter and the gross, I don’t know, but it didn’t.  So Anonymous Husband took it away from her.

When he left, I gave it back (don’t judge, I was busy and it was occupying her).  She then proceeded to throw the mandarin in the coincidentally perfectly mandarin-sized space between the fridge and the cupboard.

Seriously?  You really have to throw food in there?  There are starving kids in China. 

Couldn’t she be normal and throw crayons or shoes or rodents behind the fridge? 

To be fair, I can see the appeal – toddler in possession of forbidden fruit (literally), gap just big enough to fit fruit, busy mom not watching as closely as she should.  But, come on, let’s not waste the food.

New Quirks

Eirinn is a quirky kind of girl.  She has all kinds of them.  The usual toddler quirks like asking a ker-billion questions all in a row without waiting for an answer to any of them, or asking to get up, up, up then immediately asking to get down, down, down.  You know, the standards.

And in the past few weeks she’s started a few new things that can definitely be labelled “quirky”.  Anything that, when performed in front of a stranger, needs to be a) apologized for, or b) explained with eye-rolls, can be labelled as “quirky”.

New quirk #1 – “What’s that sound like?”

This one is certainly cute.  I don’t know where she got it from, but she wants to know what every little noise is.  It’s usually a truck, even if it isn’t.  If I don’t know what the sound was, I’ll say “I don’t know, what does it sound like?” and she’ll say “a truck” or “a digger truck”, because we live in an under-construction subdivision.

New quirk #2 – “…RIGHT NOW!”

This one?  Not so cute.  She has learned how to be demanding.  Not that she wasn’t demanding before, but now she knows how to verbalize it.  I don’t know who taught her this, but it isn’t funny.  “Have cookie, RIGHT NOW!”  “See Bugba, RIGHT NOW!” 

New quirk #3 – Two Ah-lankies

So she has these two fuzzy green blankets, two different ‘brands’.  First she liked the thin one best.  She carried this one around for about a year.  Then her and thin ah-lankie must have gotten into a fight or something because she didn’t like it anymore and she liked thick ah-lankie better.  Then thick ah-lankie was accidentally forgotten at Bugba’s house one night and thin ah-lankie had to act as a substitute.  She started calling thin ah-lankie “New Ah-lankie”, even though it was the older one.  Now she has to have both.  Everywhere she goes.  She drags both around like they were sewn to her palms.  Oh, and if you didn’t catch on, an ah-lankie is a blanket.

New quirk #4 – “I carry you?”

This means “Can you carry me?”, but she doesn’t have proper pronoun usage mastered yet.  That’s ok.  She’ll learn.