Opposites Attract

Lily Ruth has been excited about opposites lately. Her first favorite pair was 'hot' and 'cold'. She picked up the signs from Baby Signing Time: Volume 4. She would point at her cup of ice water or juice and say 'COOOOLD' while doing the sign. Then she would point at my cup and say 'coffee HOT' while doing the sign for 'hot'. Then she would get super-duper-silly and say/sign that her water was hot and Mama's coffee was cold. That cracks her up every time.

Lately, her favorite pair is 'stop' and 'go'. We do a lot of our traveling on residential streets. Lily yells 'STOP!', and I am able to oblige. Then she very seriously intones 'GO'. This goes on for as long as we're driving down quiet streets. It gets sillier and sillier as we continue on.

Today, we had gone through 3 or 4 rounds of Stop and Go when Lily piped up with 'Oh Mama, you're so nice!' What a DOLL! I told her that she was nice, too. Then we went and got coffee so we could play Hot and Cold :-P

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All this talk of backseat driving reminds me of a tale from days of yore...

I was still in my twenties. My best friend Wendi had a baby of her very own, but I was perfectly content to be childless. We spent a lot of time together (as best friends do), and most of that time was set to a high-volume soundtrack. We loooooove us some loud music!

As a result of our soundtrack, Wendi Lady's wee one (the Princess Autumn Lee) could (and often did) sleep through anything. The sounds of our music and our voices had colored her life from day one, and she seemed pretty happy with her lot... until that fateful day when the Princess was around the same age that Lily Ruth is now...

We were driving along, singing at the top of our lungs, when a sound intruded. 'Did you hear something?' 'Maybe.' We turned down the stereo, and there it was - 'HEY!' We looked at each other. 'Did she just yell 'HEY' at us?' 'HEY! QUIET!' We almost peed ourselves giggling as we began to turn the radio back up. 'HEY!... Quiet!' This time the 'quiet' held the waver of tears. Our poor Princess. She had finally developed an opinion, and we were ignoring it. We spent some time discussing various compromises, but she's pretty much an All Or Nothing Girl (wonder where she gets it...), and could not be swayed from her vote of 'QUIET!'. It's a shame that she was so clearly out voted...