MINE!

Hearing Olive talk has always been fun. Seeing her pick up more and more words is a thrill. She is at the point now where she can imitate almost anything you say, as long as she is in the mood. As you can see from the last post, she is becoming a girl that knows what she wants and is starting to be able to SAY what she wants. Where as we used to have to focus on reading her sometimes indecipherable, sometime obvious sign language, not she can firmly say yes and no (or more accurately “eh-eh” and “NNNNO!”). 6 months ago she would run around the house mumbling and you would fumble with various remedies to her distress.

“Do you want this ball? No? How about a drink? Not that either. Okay, how about a piece of cheese? An Apple? Do you want to be picked up? Do you want daddy to punch himself in the face?”

Now she runs up to you, grabs your hand and says “Apple” or “Juice” or “Cheese” or “Ball” or “Up”. It has made catering to her every whim and need SOOO much easier. Of course, you do need to deal with her whining and saying “Up!” over and over again while you push her in her stroller. And you need to figure out ways to get through the rest of the grocery shopping trip after she sees an apple and decides that is the word she wants to say for the rest of the stay. But overall, language is definitely a good thing.

Except for one little pesky word: MINE!

And it really should always be in capital letters like that because she rarely whispers it or says it in passing. It is almost always exclaimed with ferocity that only capital letters can really convey here.

MINE!

Short. Abrupt. To the point. And she says it a lot. We aren’t sure where she picked it up, but we are assuming daycare. No matter how many toys or how few kids there are in a day care, I think that kids learn really quickly to take possession of certain things. No way I’m letting you play with these blocks or those dolls or these books. These are MINE! Ownership. It is core to our humanity. If the apocalypse happened tomorrow you would bet that we would all be hording water and Spam and gasoline. MINE! Kids in daycare are just little, cuter versions of our imaginary post-apocalyptic selves.

MINE!

She says it about her crayons, her dolls, her dinner, her shoes, my dinner, my shoes, etc.
But MINE! Became a precursor to an exciting event last night. It was a gateway word, if you will. While in the bath, Olive was claiming ownership over her various toys. MINE! MINE! MINE! When she very clearly said: “My Duck!” I’m going to go ahead and count this has her first two word statement (I’m ignoring “I love you” which really comes out more as “Ahluvoooo” and “Buh-Bye” which is really one word).

So it won’t be long until MINE! Is replaced by “My ball” and “My cheese” and “My apple”. And then you know what happens next, right? Yup, she goes to Harvard.