Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Translation of preschool-ese: What "I love..." really means to a 3 yr old

Recently Brenna has discovered the phrase "I love _____." It's quite cute. Usually it is a random pronouncement and "love" is stated with importance and verve. For example, "I LOVE purple...And pink. Yes, I LOVE them."

It is often associated with food - usually foods that I've never seen her eat and occasionally she has actually professed dislike for. For example, Brenna recently announced that she LOVEs pizza. However, I have never actually seen her EAT pizza. In fact, when presented with the opportunity to eat pizza she generally chooses to eat anything but pizza.

Or it comes in response to a question that really doesn't need that sort of qualification. For example, "Brenna, it's bath time. Are you ready to take a bath?" "Yes mommy!! I LOVE bath time!"

And it may be followed by and linked to something she really does love, like chocolate.

So the exchange sounds something like this:
M: Brenna, it's bath time. Are you ready to take a bath?
B: Yes mommy! I LOVE bath time!!
M: Great, I'm so glad you love bath time. Let's go get you undressed.
B: No!
M: But you love bath time and you have to take off your clothes to take a bath.
B: NO!
[exteremely pained sigh from mommy]
B: If I take a bath can I have some chocolate? I LOVE chocolate!

Thus, I have now figured out that when Brenna says "I LOVE ____!" it really only means that she loves to say that she loves _____, not that she actually loves _____.

Got it?

Oh, and she is going to try to sleep in her big girl bed tonight. Last attempt at the big girl bed was a complete fail with Brenna getting up at 5 am, coming into our room, and having a screaming meltdown on the floor when told it was not time to wake up and she needed to go back to her bed...or at least to her room....or really anywhere but screaming on the floor at the foot of our bed.

Yeah, we LOVED that.

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