Turning Four

Today was Gillian's "special day" at school.  Three times a year, it's her turn to bring the snack, which also confers on her the responsibility for holding the American flag and the Christian flag and the Bible while all the kids pledge allegiance to each.  She also gets to lead the line to the rest room and "call the colors" (call out different colors, and kids with each color on go to the snack tables).  The teachers always arrange it so that one of their special days is the day closest to their birthday--hers is Sunday.

So, yesterday we baked cupcakes.  I used a mix and canned frosting because I figured the 3-year-olds wouldn't notice or care, and this can of frosting had heart sprinkles, which combined one of her favorite shapes with her favorite substance.  While we were frosting them, she was standing on her stool across the island from me, so happy. "I think my friends will really like these cupcakes," she said thoughtfully.  Then, "You know, some people don't say 'you're welcome.'"  Clearly, she was envisioning the whole scene--how her teachers would say, as they do for each child, "Gillian brought the snack today--can everyone say, 'Thank you, Gillian.'?" And then she would try to muster up the boldness to reply back to everyone, "You're welcome."  

Which I think she managed to do in, her tiny, shy little voice.  She was well pleased when I picked her up from school today, running out of her class all smiley.  As we walked out to the car with her little hand in mine, she was trying to straighten the birthday hat they gave her and asking, "Am I turning four?"  Yes, you are.  "For real?"  Yes, for real! "Are you just pretending?"  No, you're turning four, little Bean!  "For real?"  Yes!  "Not just pretend?"  It was almost as if it was just too amazing to be true.  

Oh, little Gillian, I wish you could stay this age forever--but I also remember thinking this when you were two weeks old, sleeping in my lap; and one year old, padding down the hallway at the vacation house in your first sneakers; and two years old, just learning to talk.  

On the way home, she said, "I have to tell you something.  But I'll whisper it.  Today, on the way to school.  Somebody tried to kill us!  But Daddy honked and the person moved his truck and he didn't kill us."  Daddy later confirmed that in a moment of minor traffic-related irritation, he had tossed off, "Is this person trying to kill us?"  Which of course, Gillian absorbed as if it were a report of an attempted first-degree homicide (taking it in stride, as is her wont).  

She continues to interpret her perceptions through a certain darkness.  A week or so ago, I was cuddling her and telling her how much I love her and she asked, out of nowhere, "Do you love me even when you're trying to kick me out of the house?"  Uhh . . . I have no idea where she got that, and also no idea what the right answer was supposed to be? Yes?  No?   Then a couple of days ago, Allison Clare was chattering about who her own best friends were, and I was brushing Gillian's teeth and asked her, "Who is your best friend, Gillian?"  And Gillian pointed to me.  I said, "Oh, Gilly, I am so honored to be your best friend.  You're one of my best friends too, and I love you." She spat out her toothpaste and said very calmly (and in an untroubled fashion), "I wasn't pointing. I was making a zero.  Nobody is my best friend." 

But one thing that she finds endlessly hilarious is the scatological.  She loves to insert the word "poop" where it is least expected ("No, you're going to marry a poop!"), which results in endless peals of her own giggles.  Tonight, after several bad nights in a row of her crying at bedtime, I amused her enough to buy a quiet evening by telling her (how has it come to this?) a story about a poop family and their daily activities, which climaxed with a swim in, you guessed it, the toilet.  She was laughing so hard she was writhing on the bed.  I told it three times.  

This is the transformation parenthood has wrought in me--from a person with an expensive graduate degree in literature to a person who repeats poop stories on demand.