Wanda is my best buddy. We’re together all day. When she smiles, I smile. When she cries, I sometimes comfort her. When I cry, she does not notice.
Wanda spends a lot of time writing lately. She writes her name (not actually Wanda) and her “impossible name,” a version of her name with about 20 other random letters scattered about. She recently learned to write “HELLO!”
Her “O”s are disconcertingly small. I find messages like this all over the house:
HELL.! -Wanda
Um. Hell. to you too!
Whenever anything good happens to Wanda, like having her name picked out of the singing-time bucket at church to be a special helper, she fiercely yells, “YESSS! I KNEW it!”
The direct translation of “I KNEW IT!” is “I had absolutely no idea that would happen but I’m really glad it did.”
“Someone just left a giant pink chocolate statue of Spiderman on the front porch for you!”
“YES!! I KNEW IT!”
“Laylee and Magoo have dropped out of school and will spend all the rest of their days feeding you Cheez-its and watching Diego with you.”
“YES!! I KNEW IT!”
“The whole world is now clothing optional.”
“YES!! I KNEW IT!”
She is fierce about everything, especially her style. All of her clothes are ninja clothes. If the pants aren’t jeans, they are ninja pants. If the skirt is worn by Wanda, it is a ninja skirt. Any item of clothing can be a ninja item if she deigns to put it on.
Wanda has pretend friends. Currently they are named MinLin and Federica.
Her hair is knots. Always.
Her eyebrows are acrobatic in their expressive abilities.
When you give her a gift, even if it’s something she didn’t know existed, she always says, “OH! It’s what I always wanted!” and clasps her hands together in front of her face.
She swims fiercely and is WAY too confident in her abilities. She is fast and extremely buoyant and refuses to use her arms most of the time. She is to Michael Phelps what a person who runs with their arms hanging down flat against their sides is to Hussein Bolt.
She runs like a cartoon character, lifting up one leg behind her and balancing with super hero running arms for a couple of seconds before taking off.
Wanda has learned from her brother that kissing is SICK and not in a “phat sick” kind of way. It is super gross. So, like Magoo, whenever Dan and I kiss, she says, “I didn’t see that,” even if she was looking directly at us when the saliva was exchanged.
The other night, Dan kissed me at dinner mostly just to torture Magoo, and Wanda said, “I don’t want to EVER see that again.” She then paused for half a second and said, “Do it again!” so that she could get her eyes closed tightly the second time around and say, “I didn’t see that!”
Wanda is super excited about tomorrow and often asks questions like the following:
“After I go to sleep and then wake up, will it be tomorrow?”
“Yes! I knew it!”
“Are we gonna have tomorrow AFTER ta-DAY?!”
“YES!! I KNEW IT!”
Earlier this week I kept her home from preschool because she had a cough. So two days later she asked to go to school and I told her I wasn’t sure if she was well enough yet. She said, “You let me go to school one time when I was a little bit sick and I’m just a little bit sick and if I cough, I will cover it… LIKE THIS!” She then threw her arm up with her elbow clamped to her mouth and her eyes bugging out of her head, like Dracula covering his fangs with his cape.
The eyes were a question.
The answer was yes.
Yes, Four Wanda. If you cover your mouth… LIKE THIS, you can do pretty much whatever you want.
She is such a fantastic little ninja.
What a great description!!! So funny and so sweet, you will have to save this for her to read in her old age.
This had me laughing so hard. From the beginning. I have a four year old too, and while he doesn’t have the same quarks as yours, he is pretty quarky too, but you write it out so well. I don’t even know you, but I love to read your blog.