It has been a busy week. And Nan and I are slogging through cold# 9,632. We've had a lot of just-the-two-of-us time this week, and I'm amazed by my daughter's ever-increasing vocabulary. And her comprehension. Car rides are particulary enlightening these days. For instance, this week I learned:
1) Dogs eat mustard. All dogs. This is, apparently, their primary source of nutrition according to my daughter. I have no idea where this came from-- she's never willingly eaten mustard, I doubt she could pick it out of a line-up of condiments.
2) She is a princess-girl. As in, "I not a (fill in the blank), I a PRINCESS-GIRL, MOMMY!" (I believe I said, "Okey-dokey, Artichokey", leading to "I not a ARTICHOKEY, MOMMY, I a PRINCESS-GIRL!") This makes me laugh.
3) There is a lot of weeping at pre-school, and it generally isn't her. She always has a tale of woe about some poor child weeping. And it's always told with great drama, complete with gestures and facial expressions.
4) When we get rid of our cats later this week, it's going to be ugly. For various reasons, we've decided to post ads on Petfinder to find the cats new homes, where they will be happier and get more attention, and we will have less cat hair/dander/ cat pee in the hallway. (Jay thinks some of our frequent colds could be allergy related-- I am willing to entertain this idea, especially as it rids our house of my archnemesis, Miles the peeing cat.) However, this decision has coincided with her new love affair with our pets. She spent the whole car ride home from school discussing the fact that Phoebe sometimes meows in the bedroom, and Daddy tells her to hush. We had to reenact this-- sometimes I was Phoebe and she was Daddy, sometimes I was Daddy and she was Phoebe-- and it nearly broke my heart and made me reconsider. Then, I stepped in two separate piles of barf and found cat poop on the bathmat in the space of six minutes. This stiffened my resolve.

We made a special visit to the Children's Museum today. We had Breakfast With the Witches-- it was a special event in honor of Halloween, and it included breakfast as well as a play and a trip through the Museum's Haunted Train. It was awesome. Breakfast was so-so-- the witches aren't very good cooks, I'm afraid-- but Natalie loved the play, and the train was cool. She was completely unaffected by the train until we reached the last car. We walked through cobwebs, past skeletons, and various other scary sights and she didn't even seem to notice them, but something scared her in the last leg of the trip. We couldn't figure out what made that different from every other thing we saw, but it was cool-- she just rode in Jay's arms for the last bit, and she was fine once we were out of there. I'm a little afraid she'll have nightmares tonight, and I'll regret my decision to take the toddler through the Haunted Train, even during the lights-on, friendly hour. We shall see.