I and Thou, sort of

I've been endlessly amused by how AC learns the tricky features of language. Some things seem like they would be so confusing that I'm fascinated when she figures them out--like how the "I" and "you" in a single conversation keep changing back and forth in their referents. She has now figured out how to use "I" and "my" to refer to herself most of the time, but there are a few phrases that she has apparently learned as a single unit, not realizing that they contain the same interchangeable parts that she now knows how to assemble.

At bedtime, Sam and I usually divide and conquer, with one of us taking each girl. The other night, I came into the living room with Gillian where Sam and AC were playing, and sensing that it was about time for us to divide them up up, Allison Clare smiled up at me, reached out her arms to be picked up, and volunteered (in the phrase one of us so often uses), "I'll take Munchkin."