[
mammalog
]
2001-02-27
Do it once, do it a million times:
I'm now learning just what odd little creatures two-year-olds are. Elena's not yet two, of course (not til April 23rd), but functionally, she's close enough - because she's so darn brilliant, you see.
Part of the oddness of people at such a stage is that they *love* routine and repetition. So when I drew a little butterfly on the back of her hand the other day, I didn't realize that I have set myself up to draw hundreds, maybe thousands. She *adores* them.
Originally I drew a butterfly on the back of one hand, and a ladybug on the other. The ladybug she didn't like - she kept saying "Go away, bug!" at high volume and I considered that it had been unwise of me to put such a thing on her where she can't take it off.
So the second time, I did two butterflies, and she finally actually tried to say the word "butterfly". She pronounces it "bufferby", which is just *entirely* too cute.
Well, she's so enamored of this idea now that I have to re-do her butterflies any time they start to fade. In other words, just about after every bath or hand-washing (and I use a Sharpie [tm] permanent pen, too!).
Which brings me to another topic - OCD. That is, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. I think I have some of this in a rather rare manifestation (which I uh, don't feel like mentioning right now), and I wonder if Elena has some, too, or if she's just at some odd little kid stage.
She is absolutely obsessed with washing her hands. She demands it, repeatedly. If I leave her stepstool out, invariably she's at the sink, putting her hands under water, then getting the soap. It worries me somewhat. I do hope it eventually lessens, at least a bit.
Anyway, back to the butterflies. Elena wanted to draw butterflies on my hands, too, so I let her. To anyone else, they look like a set of random, mostly-parallel lines, but to me, ahh, they are exquisitely beautiful.
