is there an echo in here?

We continue to be reminded that Maggie hears everything we say. Notice I didn’t say LISTENS to everything we say, because well, she’s almost three and if she listened to everything we said, we’d be on the news and possibly millionaires because that would mean we held the SECRET TO PARENTING.

Oh how I wish.

She hears everything we say and eventually- hours, days, sometimes weeks later- it comes back out of her mouth toward us. “DON’T SAY NO TO ME!” or “YOU NEED TO BE NICE!” (Complete with finger-pointing!)

A few weeks ago in the car, we were listening to Miranda Lambert’s “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” (or “CRAZY GIRL!” as Maggie likes to call it) The next song came on, and Maggie asked me what song it was. I told her “Dry Town”. She said “Oh.” and that was that.

This morning as we were pulling out of the garage, out of nowhere, she said, “I wanna listen to Dwy Town!”

Dan said she did the same thing to him today on the way home from daycare. Weeks ago she asked who sang a song they were listening to, and he said “Green Day”. Then today, she asked about another song, and he said he wasn’t sure who it was. She said, “Maybe Green Day?”

Her mind, a steel trap.

Last night the wheels started turning on the whole Getting Rid of The Pacifier Thing. It was purely accidental. We checked on her before bed and she had spit it out. So Dan took it from her crib and we thought, let’s just see how this goes! Then I looked at it more closely and saw it was torn. OH NOOOOO! It’s the last one we have in the house and I VOWED not to buy another one (I even told Maggie that.)

So. This was it. We were REALLY DOING THIS, OMG. HOLD ME.

Of course, at 3am when she woke up fussing and fumbling around her crib, looking for her pacifier, I gave in and let her have the stupid thing. I’d explain in the morning. IT’S 3AM, NO ENERGY FOR EXPLANATIONS. In the morning, I showed her that it was broken and told her we needed to throw it away. She gave me a weird look, but when we came downstairs for breakfast, she threw it in the trash with me.

WHOA.

We talked about sleeping without it tonight, like a Big Girl! and she was okay with that. We mentioned it again at dinner. But then, after her bath tonight as she was getting on her pajamas, she asked for her pacifier. When I reminded her we didn’t have any more pacifiers, she MELTED into tears and sobs. All through pajamas, brushing her teeth, combing her wet hair, she kept crying, “I wanna be a BAY-BEE!” and “I want my ba-ba!” (which apparently means bottle, which CRACKS me up because it’s been a year and a half since she’s had a bottle!)

Dan came up to see what the fuss was about, and I said, “Oh, someone just isn’t wanting to grow up.”

We eventually calmed her down, read a few books, and put her to bed. We let her have as many stuffed animals and toys as she wanted in there with her.

She was fine for a few minutes, but then I heard her yelling. I couldn’t tell what was saying until I got closer to her room:

“I DON’T WANNA GROW UP!”

She’s been in there for nearly an hour and still isn’t asleep. She’s having trouble winding down, in there babbling and looking at a book, but at least she’s not crying.

Wish us luck.

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