Monsters and other things fantastic

There has been quite a bit of talk around this house about monsters. When there's a noise, it's probably the monster. When it gets dark out, the girls need a flashlight to keep away the monsters. Bebe walks around all wide-eyed whispering in a hoarse Bebe way, "monster". You can tell though that it is play for B. While Vivienne, I think, was once actually alarmed that there was a monster; she now plays it up. She is convinced by her papa and me that monsters aren't allowed in the house. So she tells Beatrice in a most authoritative voice, "There's no such thing as a monster. They don't exist, like the Ogres don't exist." (Great, now we have Ogres too?) Vivi is at the wise age of almost 4 when she is realizing that knowledge is quite a fun thing. And so she tells everyone all that she knows, and if you don't comment on what she expounds, she continues to repeat herself louder and louder until you hit the snooze button, or say in your most in-awe voice, "really?"

It is quite fantastic to actually sit down and have a chat with my girls. With Viv, it actually is two sided. She tells you what she thinks. Like today when she told me that she thought Christa was Joy's daughter. (Christa is younger than Joy but only by about a year.) So we had a little conversation about what a daughter is, to which she replied, "then she must be her son" So I went through a whole list of labels like son, daughter, mama, daddy, sister, brother, aunt, uncle, husband and wife. And looking at me for quite a few seconds, she decided that Christa was a wife. Okay. fair enough. I'm not going to really define each of these labels since she is still working on he and she and the difference in that. I'll just build on that for another day.

She also tells me things like "I love everyone, mama, no one excluded" she actually said that, "no one excluded". LOVE that. I also love the time she told Will that "God did it" when he asked her "Who made you so pretty?"

So having a conversation with Beatrice goes something like this.
Me:"So B what's happening?"
Bebe: (she shrugs) "cookie mama?"
M: "how do you ask?"
B: "pease?, cookie mama?"
M:"here you go, sweetie"
B: "tanks, love you, mama"
We get to the essentials. I like that about Beatrice. She just cuts to the chase. It is nice though when out of the blue she will tell me that she loves me. Viv doesn't do that too much and usually she is trying to make amends because of something she did. Bebe just loves.

Having a conversation with Phoebe is very one-sided verbally but she has quite a style of her own. Moving her eyebrows as she coos and giving me an award-winning albeit, toothless and open mouthed, grin. She has a thing she does with just one eye brow going up making the other go slightly down that seems to say "I don't know about that one, mama" and her raspberries are surprisingly well placed. It's an incredibly fun thing to speak nonsense with an infant, but it's even better to speak in a very coherent way. She is quick to respond.