the mimic

As we all know, there comes a time in a babies life when she starts to mimic. It starts in a beautiful manner- mama smiles at baby, baby smiles back, mama jumps up and down screaming, She smiled! She smiled! and then proceeds to be a goofy mess as baby continues to mimic her smile.

Baby starts to mimic sounds- ooh! ah!. We play peekaboo together, take turns clapping, making faces together. All harmless, good, old-fashioned baby and mama fun.

But at some point, it takes a sinister turn. You drop a cup and yell, Fuck! Baby jumps up and down yelling Fuc! Fuk! Oops. You slap a fly off your other child and baby turns to slap her too. Oops. And then there is just the annoying- I hand you the spoon and you hand it back to me. Over. And over. And over again.

I'm not sure if this falls into the sinister or the annoying. Whatever it is, it's not something that I want Baby S to continue, but it seems to have lodged itself in her little memory bank for the time being. What happened was this- after nursing, she grabbed my nipple with her sharp little claws. I yelled, Ouch!. Apparently, this made quite the impression on her. She then grabbed my nipple again and yelled, Ow!. And then she did it again.

Perhaps I shouldn't have laughed. That was probably the kicker. As much as it did hurt (those claws are sharp!), it was really pretty funny. What the heck was going on in her head? This is what you say when you grab mama's nipple? I tried grabbing her nipple just to show her that it hurts, but I forgot that she feels no pain. She thought this was hysterical, and responded by grabbing my nipple again. OW!


Here we are, three days later. For the past three days, she periodically grabs my nipple (hard) and yells Ow!. The memory on this kid!

Of course, it might go away if I could stop laughing.