Gaz sez, "One day when I'm bigger, but not as big as you and Dad, I'm going to have long, long hair and a long, long dress, and I'm going to sing a perfect song." This will, she says, take place on a stage upon which she has put up a lot of Christmas lights.

We've both been upgraded from "Mommy" and "Daddy" to just Mom and Dad. It seems too soon in some ways, but is perhaps evidence that she is thinking more about the things she says now.

She's also taken to saying "muh" instead of "my," as in, "Mom! There's poop in muh diaper!" It's funny the first five times, but after that just gets kinda weird. Are we the victim of a hillbilly changeling?

Last night she woke up and called for me, "Mom. MOM." Not panicked or whining, just insistent. I went in to check on her and found her sitting up in bed. I reached out for her and she grabbed my arm, held it close to her chest, and relaxed back onto the bed, face-first. I stayed bent over the bed rail (fun!), rubbing her back with my free hand, until she fell back asleep. From that vantage point, I saw that sometime before summoning me, she'd retrieved her sippy cup from the bedside table and had a drink of water. It was not so long ago that it took a lot of work to get her back to sleep if she woke up enough to call for me, and really not so long ago that she would thrash about in bed, crying for her cup of water to be brought to her. Now she remembers where the cup is, and she knows that I'll come, and she doesn't need quite so much to soothe her back down. There will be days when she does need more, but I do appreciate these days of relative ease.

I think 2009 is going to be a good year, full of lots of good new growth. Speaking of which, she's grown another half inch. Not much longer for some of those 4T clothes. And she wants everyone to know that she's "getting this snapping thing." Maybe for next Halloween I'll dress her up as a little Beatnik.

Heh

Last night we had a wee dinner party here. Gaz didn't nap too much, so I wasn't sure how she would do, but she was really good. When she decided she was done eating, she went off to quietly color on her easel for a while, giving Mark and me a chance to finish eating before getting called into duty. Auntie Aiiee also helped with the Gaz entertainment, too, which was much, much appreciated.

Now, I've gone this far without any real scatalogical tales for you, but Mark insists that I blog the following. This evening Gaz was crouched down in the living room doing her diaper-filling thing. She then got up and walked over to her Duplo block tower she built earlier today, patted it, and identified it to Mark as "tower of poop." I have no idea what any of that was about, but we're still laughing about it.

And now for something completely different, Gaz has been talking in her sleep lately. Last night Mark heard her mumble something about turning. Then she laughed and said, "Silly flowers." I only remember the request for nursing that came just after that. I believe she was dreaming about the musical flower pot thing she saw at the nursing home while we were recently visiting my grandpa, but who knows. Maybe all the flowers in her dreamscape are silly. She's also been overheard singing the Dragon Tales theme in the middle of the night. Less fun was the night she woke up asking for her pink comb and then threw a tantrum when I wouldn't let her get up to look for it. But she cheered up before long and gave both Mark and me some imaginary spiders. Because spiders won't hurt you and they aren't scary.

I think we're finally settling into the twoness of Gaz.