baby is in the eye of the beholder

So Sage and I were having fun folding paper in the living room.

First, she crumpled a sheet of bond paper in her little hand, letting the edges stick out between her fingers. "This is flower," she told me.

"What a lovely flower!" I cooed admiringly.

Next, she smoothed the paper out as best she could and rolled it into a long tube. "This is telescope," she proclaimed, gazing through one end of it.

I asked permission to look too, and we had great fun peering at each other's eyes through opposite ends of the tube.

Then she tucked the paper into a little bundle, which she cradled in her arms, humming her version of a lullabye. "This is baby," she explained. "Hmm hmm hmm, hmm hmm hmm."

Suddenly, she unfolded her arms, letting the 'baby' tumble to the floor. "Oh, no, baby fell," she announced, sounding not the least bit sorry.

"Poor baby!" I cried, reaching down to snatch the bundle off the floor. "It's okay, baby," I crooned, stroking the bundle. "Don't cry, it's okay."

"Mommy, that's not baby," Sage pronounced, looking at me as though I had taken leave of my senses. She pointed to the now-battered piece of short bond. "That's just paper."

bigote

I belatedly started growing my facial hair a few weeks back (those who are clever among you should be able to discern which Alfar is writing this LOL), encouraged by my barber to give it a try.

Now for her entire life, Sage has known her father as a man with a shaved head and no moustache or beard. So when my moustache and beard started to thicken, she would cringe when I kissed her, tickled by my growing hair.

Finally, she asked me what that thing on my upper lip was.

"It's my bigote," I told her.

She turned to her mother and said "Me too. I want bigote."

Unfazed, Nikki whipped out her eyebrow pencil and drew several dark lines on Sage's upper lip. "There you go," she said, as Sage sat quietly.

"You look great,Sage," I told the little girl.

"I'm not Sage," she informed us.

"Who are you then?" I asked.

"I'm Daddy," she said, picking herself off the bed and exiting the door to go to the office. "Bye, Mommy," she waved to Nikki.

"Wait, wait," I called after her. "If you're Daddy, who am I?" I asked.

"Sage," she replied, with a look on her face that brooked no further argument.

you are my star

Back when Sage was just learning to walk, I asked her to walk across the room to me and give me a kiss. She performed the walk impeccably, but gave me a small plastic glow-in-the-dark star (which she had scavenged from her dismantled kaleidoscope) instead of the requested kiss. I decided that it represented a kiss anyway, and tucked it away in my wallet as a keepsake.

Some months later, as she was just learning to talk, Sage was playing with my wallet and wanted to know, "Mommy, what dis?", gesturing to the little plastic star nestled next to her photo. So I explained, telling her the story of her earlier antics.

Last week, Sage was playing with my wallet again, and came up to me saying, "Mommy, I want to get star." So I helped her slip the star out of its plastic 'window'. She took it in her hands, smiling, and announced, "My kiss!" It was late at night, so we turned off the lights to go to sleep, and she was delighted to find that her 'kiss' lit up in the darkness.

Then she kissed the little star, and pressed it to my cheek, making little smacking sounds as she did so. "For you," she told me.