She's A Maverick

I think LMJ may be ready to be Governor of Alaska. We were discussing a bath that she needed and she went totally Sarah Palin on me. Grammy was taking her downstairs to see her, Grammy’s, new Christmas tree and I was explaining that as soon as she, LMJ, got done that it was time for her bath, and asked her if she understood. She really wasn’t into the bath so she thought about the question for a moment, completely ignored it, and started telling Grammy about penguins. Penguins are birds, and they don’t fly, they swim, and the penguin was a baby, and standing on ice, and ice is cold. This was one of those bittersweet parenting moments. On the one hand she’s breaking down polar water fowl for me at two years old. On the other hand she’s either of the opinion that it’s okay for me to be on her “Pay No Mind” list or that she can distract me with an abrupt topic change. Do I look like Katie Couric? Fortunately, when she came back upstairs she was ready to take a bath. I think Grammy may have had a little talk with her and greased the skids, which made me happy because I didn’t have to coax her into the bathroom or fight World War III. The bath/penguin episode wasn’t the first. Yesterday she was playing with some porcelain figurines that she isn’t supposed to play with, and when I asked her about them she was startled, put them down, and told me they were fragile. Then she told me she was very smart, which she is saying more and more, and is very cute. It’s leaving me with a tough needle to thread. I want to reinforce that she’s a genius, but I don’t want to encourage the notion that cute carries a bunch of weight in the real world. Even though it does (see Katie Couric). If I do my part maybe she can become governor of a state that doesn’t start with A – or any other vowel.