When will she start being reasonable?

We might have to start this one with a quote:

Papaya: You are a poo poo papa poo poo papa. Poo poo papa!

Me: Then maybe that means you’re a poo poo Papaya?

Papaya: Well that’s rude.

Aside from calling me a poo poo papa on the daily, one of her other favorite taunts is to turn around and shake her butt at me. When she feels extra sassy she’ll make sure you know buy adding a “what about this?” while she does it. When she really wants to get you, she’ll make actual contact with her butt shake and throw in a “stink! stink!” I think she hit her peak when she once capped it off with a “do you like that smelllll?”

But don’t let her age and potty humor fool you. If she wants to reduce you to pile of rubble, she’s more than capable. A while ago we were at the park and she was on one of those little plastic car thingies. She then yells “papa! Bye bye! I’m going to find a different daddy in California!”

But don’t question her knowledge. She once said “I know everything!” Everything about what? “Everything in the world!” Where did you learn everything in the world? “From Nashi!”

She swears like a sailor. I remember the first time, probably about a year ago, she yelled “Bye dummy head!” Nowadays her go to is simply yelling “stooopid!”

She can also be very earnest. She asks lots of questions while reading books. “Which ones are the ladybugs? Did they die?”

She chooses her words carefully, and doesn’t appreciate understatements. She once told me she had a dream where she put crystals in a water balloon and Mama took it out of her hands. I told Mama about this using the words ‘bad dream’ and she promptly corrected me saying “No! It was a nightmare!”

She’s preoccupied with fairness. Nashi isn’t immune from this either, but it’s something fierce for Papaya. If they each get a bowl of blueberries, her first question is “is it the same amount as Nashi?!” Literally anything that happens for or with Nashi that she doesn’t get herself is a wild offense and almost always ends in tears (and yelling – loud yelling).

Often, you just can’t win. Just this week she showed Mama a drawing she made and casually asked “which do you love more, me or this drawing?” Mama sweetly answered “you” and that resulted in a meltdown. The fascinating thing about this particular situation, aside from the fact that I have to imagine a meltdown would’ve occurred even if Mama answered “your drawing,” is that I’m genuinely unsure whether Papaya posed this question as an intentional trap. She’s just about that age and intelligence level where I’m not sure if she just has big feelings or if she’s becoming diabolical.

Speaking of diabolical. For the past couple of years, I’ve had this fun game/handy tool of determining whether the kids are lying to me or not. After they say something that may not be true, I’ll say “let me see your face” and then they’d smile or laugh if they were tricking me. This then turned into them quickly hiding their face in those situations. Super cute, right? Well in the past six months or so, Papaya has gotten good at turning her face stone cold when I ask to see her face and that’s when I realized this fun game of many years was actually training grounds for becoming an elite liar at a young age. Soon they’ll learn how to pass a polygraph and qualify for spy school.

All in all she continues to be quite the character. We’re told she’s a ring leader of games and activities at preschool, which I’m pretty sure started by absorbing stuff from her brother and bringing it into her own peer group. This has delighted her classmates and they are often very happy to see her show up in the morning. She spreads a lot of love around, although for me it’s the nickname “stinky goat” and her passion for jumping from high places to land on me with her knees. Of course, the biggest of these feelings are reserved for Mama. How this will materialize in their relationship during adolescence is yet to be determined. Pray for them.