Two!

I think Delphine came back from daycare approximately sixty percent smarter today than she was when we dropped her off. I have few concrete examples of this, but she generally seemed more like a talking, thinking person than a baby. Which is nice for me, because I like people better than babies.

(Although I like babies well enough -- I was walking home today and I passed a stroller going the other way, so I did the baby ogle expecting a baby of average cuteness, and instead there was this little guy, maybe four months old, in a tiny denim jacket, with a shock of black hair all spiky and sticking up, grinning like a fool. Way cuter than I expected; I think I may have giggled out loud.)

She had supper (pasta with romano beans and fiddleheads -- she didn't touch the fiddleheads but I got her to say "Beans are awesome!") at her little table, as she prefers these days, and while she was eating Thomas walked under the table and sniffed at some rice krispies of indeterminate age on the floor. Delphine said "Thomas! Don't eat it, cereal!" in exactly the right tone of voice.

When Blake came home she ran to the door to greet him ("Hi!", although in a surprise move she was naked -- have you ever been greeted at the door by a naked two-year-old? You should try it.) and asked "How was your daycare?" I guess she figures everyone goes to daycare.

She's started saying "Yes"! For the longest time she said "No" when she meant "No" and just repeated what you said when she meant "Yes". Then for a couple of days she said "Okay" for "Yes", and now she says "Yes". Hooray!

And also, we were all in the bedroom, and Delphine said "Oh goodness me!" (Because she is eighty.) And then she said "No pee on carpet." So Blake swept into action and carried her to the potty, which wasn't in the bathroom where it belongs but in the living room where Delphine had moved it so as to facilitate sitting on the potty while hanging out with Mummy, and set her down on it, and she peed! She peed in the potty! Previously she has only sat on it, with no action. So very exciting!

She's plucking words out of the ether -- we were downtown in the PATH visiting Daddy's office, and she walked up to a bench and said "It's a bench!" Bench?! I never taught her bench! That's so cool!

What else? She can count to nine (she is highly skeptical of these two-digit numbers), she likes to play with trains, and water, and she still loves to be read to. If I put on a TV show she will watch for about two minutes, and then pick out a book and ask "read it to you?" (She still hasn't sorted out who is "you" and who is "me".) She likes to go for bike rides in her "special seat" on the back of Blake's bike. Except that she thinks every time we go on the bikes we're going for ice cream (another love of hers). Which is almost true, now that I think about it; we are planning to go for ice cream on the bikes this very weekend.

And she's two. She had a good birthday -- Blake took the day off and we hung out and went to the park and went for ice cream (see what I mean). She got some nice presents, but not too many, and I made a lemon cake with blackberry jelly and buttercream icing (which was inspired by one of Sascha and Leontine's wedding cakes but wasn't nearly as good) and she ate it very neatly, with a fork, like a lady.