Smart Baby, Not-So-Smart Baby

Ah, toddlers. They learn faster than any of us can even comprehend, but they still find ways to confound us with their experimentally firing synapses. One minute you're gasping, "Wow, how can you possibly be that smart already?" The next minute you're wondering, "Wow, how is it that you managed to survive to 18 months?" A recent example of each, if I may...

Our shower nozzle started leaking a few weeks ago, and until I get around to fixing it, Anna is getting rinsed off after her baths with an old Senior Bar cup. (For the non-Domers among us, these are approximately 20-ounce plastic cups from the old bar on campus. Different cup each year, always with the football schedule on one side and some ND logo on the other. You bought one and got refills, but then the next time you went you never remembered your old one, so you got another one, and by the time you graduated you had enough Senior Bar cups to furnish your first apartment kitchen - and eventually frustrate your non-ND spouse by cluttering up her kitchen. But I digress.) Of course, Anna insisted on playing with said cup throughout the bath, so we came up with a two-cup model in which there is a blue "Anna Cup" and a green "Daddy Cup". Everybody wins.

Well, the other day Anna happened to dig her "My First Notre Dame Book" out of the book shelf and brought it over to Karen, handing it to her and saying, "Daddy cup!" Karen was like, "What are you talking about?" So Anna pointed to the cover, to the Golden Dome logo, and repeated, "Daddy cup!" Karen paused and thought, "No way," then went upstairs to check, and sure enough, there on the Daddy Cup was the same Golden Dome logo. On the Anna Cup, it's a different logo, the interlocking ND. Smartest kid ever, right?

Au contraire. Yesterday she was playing with one of her new favorite toys - a magnetic chip clip that gets stored on the refrigerator door when it's not in use. She was sitting on the floor holding her chip clip, and suddenly turned to Karen and said, "Ouch-y." No panic, no yelling, just sort of matter-of-fact. "Ouch-y." Karen asked her, "Do you have an ouch-y?" Anna nodded and repeated, "Ouch-y." So Karen got up and walked over to her and asked, "Where is your ouch-y?" Anna opened her hand to reveal that she was not actually holding the chip clip; she had, in fact, clipped it to her own palm, and then made no attempt to remove it. Not such a smart kid.

Moral of the story: I'm learning not to read too much into any of these revelations, good or bad, because she's bound to do something to contradict it in the near future anyway.