Familiar Sounds

Three year olds are a lot of fun. They are so simple and innocent, especially when compared to older siblings. The tantrums I could do without, but the rest is pretty darn cute.

My three year old likes to keep up with her big sister. So we get a lot of "Look at this!" going on around here. She shows us all kinds of wonders of the world, like how she can point her toes, bend over and lean on her head, or jump in the air. Real amazing stuff.

But we always humor her and say "Wow!'" and "Good job!" so she knows that she is not forgotten.

Except sometimes she is sort of forgotten. She will be showing off her talents and I will be in the middle of changing a diaper or pulling dog food out of my son's mouth, and I just can't give her the attention she wants. When that happens, I give the "Uh-huh, that's great! You are doing a good job!" response, withouth even looking at her. I know it's not ideal, but sometimes it's all I've got.

Apparently I do this quite often. And my oldest has noticed.

Yesterday we are in the kitchen and my oldest is digging through the "gum drawer". Yes, we have one, no it's not FULL of gum, yes it's sugarless, and yes I swore I would never keep that much gum in the house that it needed its own drawer, but that is neither here nor there.

So here is my oldest, doing her own thing, and me doing my own thing that I think involved emptying the dishwasher. And my youngest is saying "Look at me sissy! Look at me sissy!" and trying to show her big sister another one of her astounding feats.

And without skipping a beat, while her nose is deep in the search for watermelon Trident, my oldest says "Yea, uh-huh, that's great. Really excellent. Good job," without an ounce of inflection in her voice and not even a peep sent her sister's way.

I totally cracked up. I couldn't help it. When you hear yourself echoed back to you in the voice of a six year old, you just have to laugh. Which then made her laugh. And I had to call her on it, admitting that she must see me do that all too often. Which made us laugh a little more.

And there's my younger daughter, still showing us her trick.

Ah, the innocence.