Genius

It was my last day babysitting Mimic, the child prodigy. I didn't realize she was so smart until after numerous outings to the park and the bookstore and other kids her age would answer her nearly-complete-sentences with grunts and drool. (Which lead me to wonder what her IQ is. We've been reading Outliers by Malcom Gladwell and just finished the chapters on geniuses, all of whom could say something like a thousand words at age two. Mimic totally spouts off that many).

She also, at barely nineteen-months mind you, has decided to potty train herself. Sometimes I think she just likes the novelty of dangling her little legs of the edge of her tiny green potty, but other times she really goes (in which case I have been instructed to promptly thrust both of my arms straight into the air and do the Victory Baby Potty Dance). Today we did the dance eight times. EIGHT. But they were all within minutes of each other.

You see, when she "peeps" it's a pretty quick undertaking and it all comes in a single delivery. Today I had my first experience with "poop." First off, she insisted on being stripped completely nude. Pantsless wouldn't do, no, no, "Need shirt off. Shirt off. Shirt off . . . " I tried to tell her that her shirt really doesn't get in the way down there, but I didn't want a fight so we took off every last article of clothing she had on her little body. EVEN HER SOCKS had to come off.

Apparently she likes to prolong the process, force multiple flushes and multiple dances, all for what would have been a single diaper change. She sits there, obviously working pretty hard, and then gleefully jumps up and proclaims, "Flush it! FLUSH it! Poop! FLUSH IT!" Meanwhile I'm shouting "Yay! You did it! You went poop in the potty!" while spinning and throwing limbs this way and that. And for what? For a bowel movement ranging in size from a raisin to a baby carrot.

By the end I was pleading with her to just finish up already. My arms were getting tired. But then I reminded myself that this girl is one -- ONE -- and she's potty training herself. Enthusidad told me today that they randomly bought one because it was on sale. They didn't even introduce her to it. I think she just likes to mount up and dangle her legs off the edge of her little green potty to get adults to dance.