CootieGirl has a little OCD in her, apparently.

For Christmas, Santa put magnetized letters in CootieBoy’s stocking, which immediately became CootieGirl’s possession. We put them on the fridge for them both to use (CootieBoy’s great joy is dropping them on the floor, putting them in Cooper’s food dish, or hurling them into the nearby laundry room).

CootieGirl’s favorite thing to do? Organize them by color, for one. Last night she had all of the letters in the living room, and as we stood in the kitchen talking she would come in with one or two letters and put them on the fridge by color. But then she would very careful make sure they were aligned as close to vertical as possible. Then she’d run and get another few letters and do the same thing all over again once the new letters were incorporated.

I noticed the “all things must be in a line” thing a few weeks ago – we were in her room playing with CootieDad’ collection of rubber ducks, and she put them all in a straight line in front of her. Once she had it the way she liked she left the room to go watch tv. But she would NOT leave until those ducks were all in a perfect row.

With the candy from her stocking? She would take out each item and lay it on the floor, and proceeded to place them in a line based on length – the Dora candy cane being the longest, and the mini-giant Hershey’s kiss being the shortest. And once each item was in it’s proper place she began to eat the candy.

So when CootieDad and I first got married and began living in the same house we came to the realization that we liked to sing everything. And I mean everything. From “Good morning” to “How do you want those eggs?” it was all done in a nonsensical sing-song voice. We don’t do it much anymore, but for a while we did it ALL THE TIME.

Now, CootieGirl sings all the time. And not just when she’s playing. She won’t sing-song what she’s saying a lot of the time, but she sings a lot. But she DOES sing-sing nonsense occasionally. Tidbits I’ve heard over the past few days:

“CootieGirl, CootieBoy, Daddy and Cooper. La la la la…and Mama too.”
“La la la la…I don’t like it…La la la la.”

She has also said some things that make us laugh. The best one was:

“And I said, ‘WAR’!”

To which we reply, “What is it good for? Nothing! Absolutely nothing!”

Of course, she has no idea what we’re prattling on about, but she did the and-i-said-war thing at least 3-4 times in one afternoon.

In more disturbing vocal stylings, over the weekend I did hear her distinctly holler, “I’ll kill you!” while we were playing together I responded with, “That’s a weird thing to say – did you hear that at school?”

“Yes.”

“Who said it?”

She said the little girl’s name, and it fit the profile from what I know of the girl. Sweet girl – but a little strange sometimes. She’s older than CootieGirl, about 5 years old.

I said, “Well, [the girl] may say stuff like that, but I don’t like hearing it – it makes me sad when you say it. So let’s not say it anymore, okay?”

“Okay, Mama.”

Haven’t heard it since – but then, it’s only been three days. As much as she’s learning great things at daycare (her manners are nearly impeccable), I suppose being in the older kids’ classroom will have some not-so-great things as well.

On Saturday at our White Elephant party, CootieGirl wore her purple princess dress. She looked so stunning that upon waking on Sunday morning she decided to wear the purple princess dress to church. That went over so well that Monday when she was getting ready for school she picked out….you guessed it, the purple princess dress.

By then I think the dress could have stood on it’s own from all the dirt.

Needless to say yesterday CootieDad put the dress in the clothes hamper so that she couldn’t find it. Maybe tomorrow we’ll have her wear the blue outfit – it’s more wintery because it has fur on the cape.

She’s not sick – but she has a cough. Said cough has resulted in a sultry raspy voice that cracks me up. Right now she’s calling downstairs to her dad and it’s cracking me up because I think even at 2 1/2 she knows that her voice is “off” and is playing it up for laughs.

Now she’s running back and forth from one side of the daybed to the other screaming at them in order to torture Freddie and Ginger , the two cats who hate people the most. Those poor things probably HATE kids right about now.