Unmellow Yellow

There was a time when my wife and I consistently referred to our daughter as “the mellow one”, at least in comparison to her unrelentingly intense brother. I’m quite sure we did this, and I could no doubt look back through the blog archives to find proof, but I’m not going to do that because it would only underline the point that what may have been true not so very long ago at all is now inapplicable. The little girl is many things these days as her personality is well and truly emerging, but “mellow” is not one of them.

The other day she was standing on the large couch in our front room (aka the defacto playroom full of both kids’ toys) and dropping down onto her diaper-padded bottom as fast as she could, then standing up again, then dropping down again, up and down, over and over. Which is not terribly noteworthy as that kind of repetitive action for its own sake is absolutely normal for a girl her age. What elevated it to something that would stick in my brain was the fact that every time she was about to drop herself down again, she would take a deep breath and shout “Yellow!” Floomp. “YELLOOWWW!” Floomp. I could not tell you how that particular word came into her head at that moment; it seems possible to me that we (her mother, her big brother and I) were talking about something yellow immediately prior, and equally possible that we weren’t and it was completely random. But apparently she just really liked the sound (or maybe the mouthfeel) of the word as pure interjection. I suppose “Geronimo” would still be a bit advanced for her.

It’s not that all the little girl does these days is run and jump and flail and generally cause as loud a ruckus as possible. Between her and the little guy (and, to be fair, my wife as well) there are numerous teddy bears in the house and the little girl loves playing “caregiver at naptime”, arranging pillows on the floor like sleeping mats and putting one teddy bear on each pillow, face down, with old receiving blankets over each of them, and she takes turns patting each one on the back. Of course, sometimes she decides a teddy isn’t in precisely the right alignment with his assigned mat, and the little girl may very well rectify this by lifting the teddy bear up over her head and body-slamming it WrestleMania-style, which may or may not rectify the original positioning problem, but certainly lets teddy know he isn’t going anywhere for a while.

So, she’s growing, and growing up. She has opinions now, and an (equally age-appropriate, unfortunately) aptitude for saying “No!” to things the first time we offer them to her, only to change her mind a second or two later once she’s established that she’s the one in control. She likes to run and climb and shout. The stage is being set for Baby #3, who will either be the loudest, craziest child yet in order to receive a fair share of the attention demanded by his two older siblings, or else … no, really, there’s no “or else”, I’m pretty sure loudest-and-craziest is the way it’s going to go down.