"I will do that"

Danielle was over last night and we cooked a delicious dinner together. She took a great series of photos with my half-working camera. Danielle and I both put our hair in pigtails to match Katie's. Peter's been working crazy hours this week. And Katie's been... Katie, incredibly sweet and cute and occasionally frustrating. This morning, for example, she didn't want to eat breakfast because she didn't have the correct color hairband in her hair. "No, not the green one Mommy! I want a pink hairband!" Can I tell you that the hairband wasn't green, it was purple and you can't even see hairbands when your hair is in a ponytail. And then she barely ate her breakfast. Two-year-olds are definitely a life lesson that not everything is rational and you have to respect this and move on.

"I WILL do that" is another current Katie-ism. Insted of "I'll" she says "I will" and it sounds really cute and very formal. Emphasis on the will though, interestingly (with the self-centered aspects of toddlerhood, I'd imagine that the "I" would get the emphasis). Another favorite is I will help you. It doesn't matter what you are doing, Katie wants to help. I'm trying to come up with tasks that are Katie safe. I let her help take the silverware out of the dishwasher and she can also put out on the table. She loves to help cook and it's a little harder for find those tasks for her to help with. The best I've come up with is guacamole (thanks to Laurie for this one). Katie calls it "mocamole" and we start with buying the ingredients together (most often from Ruqsana), I do the chopping and she does some mixing. It's very cute and she's so happy to be part of the process. Last night I was remembered that Oma used to let me taste the salad dressing that we made (adjusting for my preference for vinegar) so I let Katie be the "official taste tester" as we used to call it.