Kids say the darndest things

Yesterday I dropped Mia off at babysitting with a light lunch (sunflower butter and honey sandwich, a few tortellini, cheese) because she keeps coming home with an almost full lunchbox. I also only packed her a water bottle, as she never drinks the milk and we're shelling out hundreds of dollars on organic whole milk that we end up drinking because it tastes so good.

When I went to pick her up, she was drinking a sippy cup of milk. Happily!! I asked my friend about it, and she said Mia was doing the sign for milk, so she gave her some and Mia drank it.

Of course, I was thrilled that Mia was drinking milk. We've drastically cut back on the nursing, and she hasn't been eating as much yogurt as she used to, so any milk product she eats or drinks is a good one.

But Mia doesn't know the milk sign.

Over the past few months I've sporadically tried to teach Mia a few signs. Our music class sings a song with some of the big ones--hungry, thirsty, eat, drink, tired, happy. Each line of the chorus ends with please, please, please, more, more, more, until I'm all done! From this song, Mia has gotten the sign for more and that's about it. I've tried to teach her milk, but she has never shown me the sign for it. She is in the stage now where she is very frustrated when she wants something and doesn't know how to ask for it and has begun to whine when she doesn't get what she wants. I was hoping a few signs would alleviate this problem.

I thought it was pretty cool that Mia figured out how to ask for milk on her own. It made me a little sad, though. I spend so much time with her, I thought knew everything about her and what she knows. But each time I pick her up from babysitting I learn something new about what she knows and can do. I love that she has this whole other life outside our little cocoon, but at the same time I can't believe how quickly she is growing up and becoming her own little person. Pretty soon she'll be in school with this whole other life that Ben and I can only guess at.

(Secretly, though, I don't think she was doing the milk sign. The sign for milk looks suspiciously like the finger movements for a song we sing at music called Sticky Sticky Peanut Butter, which Mia has begun to sing hundreds of times a day.)