She's so glad when Daddy comes home...

Phoebe has done a lot of colouring in her life, a lot of scribbling. Only recently has she started trying to make sense of her scribbles—naming things in her pictures and so forth. Until today, however, only she has been able to discern what she's been drawing. 

Today she woke up obsessed with the idea of Daddy coming home. Probably because he was not at home. 

She loves the Daniel Tiger episode "Grownups Come Back," so of course she wanted to draw a picture of herself with Daddy. The little preschoolers do that in the episode—draw a picture of themselves with their grownup to help them feel happy. She wanted me to participate in this project.

I was tasked with drawing Phoebe while she turned her attention to drawing Daddy. Here's our finished work:

Like her babbles, which those who don't know her well might not be able to understand at first listen, this drawing might not make very much sense to anyone who hasn't been trying to interpret her squiggles the past long while. But when I sent this picture to Andrew he immediately texted back, "EYES!"

Yes, she was very deliberate about giving Daddy his eyes. 

I'm not sure how flattering he found the rest of the picture when I told him that that...was him...but, yeah. That's him alright. Spitting image. 

An excellent first "legible" drawing!

She then went on to tell anyone who would listen about what was going to happen after Daddy came home from work. Recall that we work very hard to interpret her babbling. We're pretty good at it...but things sometimes still get lost in translation.

"After Daddy comes home, Daddy will hurt me," Phoebe said cheerfully. 

"What?!" I said. "Daddy will hurt you?"

"No!" she said, equally shocked. "Daddy will hurt me."

"I am not sure I follow," I said. "Tell me again."

"I want Daddy hurt me," she said. "Daddy come home. Daddy hurt me."

"You want Daddy to do what?"

"Hurt me."

"Sweetie, Daddy's not going to...hurt...you."

"No! Not hurt me! Hurt me! Daddy not hurt me! Daddy hurt me!"

We began to offer her other words that might mean what she was trying to say and she accepted both "hug" and "hold." So we are still not quite sure what she was meaning to say. Sometimes "hug" can sound like "hud" and "hold" never quite comes out as "hurt" but we've never confused it for "hurt" before. She clearly didn't mean "hurt" but that was the word that kept coming out. 

"Golly!" I told the big kids. "This is why you always take what little kids say with a grain of salt!"