By Lori
Inside my sweet Emma, there's a monster.
And yesterday, it grew claws.
No kidding.
A couple of months ago, during dinner, she suddenly declared that she was a monster. So I said something along the lines of, "No, monster! Don't eat Emma's peas!" And it stuck. At nearly every meal, the monster returns. And if we don't herald it with the appropriate greeting, Emma will remind us. "Tell the monster not to eat any kiwi!" So we do, and of course the monster does, and Emma/monster growls mightily.
It's handy, I have to admit. If she's eating slowly or neglecting something, all we have to do is say, "This bite of pasta is for Emma. I don't want the monster to have any of it!" and she's wolfing it down.
Last night, for whatever reason, the monster showed up at teeth-brushing time. It was actually a nice change of pace, since Em starts to sense the impending doom of bedtime around then, and insists on doing another 12 dance steps around the linoleum, hop from one foot to another on her stepstool and dawdle over which toothbrush and paste to use. But the monster was so glad to have his mighty fangs cleaned that she stood still for me.
Until the claws came out, and she pretended to scratch me over and over, with hands and feet. She'd get distressed if I acted like it hurt ("No, Mommy, I was just pretending"), but found great joy in slashing me to bits.
I blame the scary ogre from Steven Kellogg's Jack in the Beanstalk for the claws (and myself for not bothering to flip through the book for checking it out). But the monster came straight out of her head (or maybe it took the place of the baby who was in her belly for months). I can't wait to see what she thinks of next.
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