Smart Girl

Maddie is so smart.  I know I say that at least once a day...but seriously, she is so smart!  Sometimes I forget how young she is.  I expect a lot more from her than I ever thought I would expect of a 2 year old.  It can't hurt to set my standards high for her, it can only make her more mature, right?  I know I'll be eating those words when she's about 12 and acting much more mature than I want her to be!

Maddie has chores now.  Yes, she's 22 1/2 months old and she has two chores she's responsible for.  She even has a calendar for each of her chores.  Every night she has to feed Murphy (the dog).  She gets the bowl, brings it to the garage, I put the food in it and Maddie takes it and gives it to Murphy.  She gets a stamp on her Go Diego Go calendar in the kitchen when she feeds Murphy nicely (like without dumping the food or putting it in her water).  Then when it gets close to bedtime Maddie is responsible for cleaning up all her toys.  I help out with it because I don't want it to take all night and she has so many toys out it would possibly take an hour or so to do.  She decides what she wants to clean up and does it.  When the first thing is done she picks the next thing she wants to clean up.  This is working WONDERFULLY and it only takes us about 20 minutes to get the entire playroom cleaned up.  Then she gets a stamp on her Dora the Explorer calendar in the playroom after the room is cleaned up.  If she refuses to clean up she doesn't get a stamp.  There were two nights last week that she didn't get her stamp and she cried both nights...I think she gets it :).  Well, I told her when she has a whole "line" of stamps (like a stamp every day) that she will get a special surprise.  Last night she had a whole week of stamps for feeding Murphy so I gave her two little plastic butterflies for her special surprise.  She was the happiest little girl in the world!  I emphasized that if she gets a whole line of stamps on her Dora calendar this week that she'll get another special surprise.  Let's see if she can do it!

Tonight when we were eating dinner I asked Maddie if she likes to eat mushrooms.  She said, "Yes.  Sometimes".  She didn't want to eat them tonight, I guess that's why she told me "sometimes".  This is the first time she's used that word for me so it was really cute when she said it.

Earlier tonight we were in the playroom and Murphy was laying on the floor in front of a chair.  Maddie reached down toward Murphy's back end and I didn't know what she was doing until her hand was all up against Murphy's butt.  I was on the phone with my mom at the time and explained that Murphy was laying just right so that Maddie's little plastic butterfly was RIGHT under her tail.  As Maddie reached for it the butterfly was getting pushed back so it looked like Maddie was reaching right into Murphy's "heiny hole".  Maddie said "heiny hole"?  I'm so glad I was on the phone with Mom when Maddie said that!  Then Maddie repeated "Murphy heiny hole" a time or two as I took her to the bathroom to wash her hands.  GROSS!!

One more thing that happened tonight that I thought was cute...after dinner we sat on the couch to watch tv and Maddie was looking through a cookbook I had on the couch.  She knew it was Mommy's book but didn't know it was a cookbook.  Then she got to the center section where they have pictures of some of the recipes and she got all excited and said, "It's a supper book!!"  Maybe she'll be interested in cooking one day :)