Harperisms

My daughter is pretty much the funniest thing in the world. She says and does the most hilarious things, I thought I'd share a few here.

Yucky Spiders
If you know me at all you know I am absolutely, deathly terrified of spiders. It has gotten slightly less debilitating over the years, but it is certainly not something I want to share with Harper. To help her be normal (that is as opposed to whatever the heck I am), I do things like sing "Itsy Bitsy Spider", read her books in which the protagonist is a spider, and say, when one happens to be in our house,"Oh wow, a spider!" through hidden tears and gritted teeth before I run to the other room, scream into a pillow and ask Tom to kill it.

A couple months ago I was giving Harper a bath and halfway through realized, to my horror, that there was a giant, dead spider floating in her bath water at her feet. I must say, I am rather proud of how calm I stayed. I simply told her it was time to dry off, picked her up out of the tub and began our regular routine to dry off and get PJ's on. However, Harper saw the spider as I was taking her out of the tub and became completely obsessed with it. She said, "Spidah" in this really gruff, annoyed voice, and then "Yucky!" in the same tone. I'd never heard her use this voice before and it sounded pretty frickin' hilarious. You know when Napoleon Dynamite gets frustrated and makes that "UH!" noise right before he says "Freaking idiot"? I would say that's pretty much exactly what it sounded like. "UH! Yucky! UH!" Over and over. Not only that, but she refused to let me dry her off, she had to keep staring at the spider. I finally had to distract her, put one of her bath toys over it, and then tell her it went bye-bye so I could get her PJ's on and get the heck out of the bathroom. I left the water and spider there for Tom to take care of when he got home.

Ever since then she'll call anything that she doesn't know a spider. A piece of yarn on the floor - yucky spider. A booger she just picked from her nose - yucky spider. A few weeks ago I was putting her in her chair for dinner and a small pea had gotten left on her chair and was all shrivelled up. You guessed it - yucky spider. I brushed it off her chair and told here there were no spiders, but she kept pointing on the floor and insisting there were yucky spiders. Halfway through the meal I said "Harper, I don't see any spiders - there aren't any," to which her quick reply was, "It's tiny." The next morning when I sat her in her chair again for breakfast she whispered "Tiny spidahs".

A few days ago after Harper had her breakfast, we went into the living room to play with toys. There was a small stain on the carpet in front of the fireplace that hadn't been there the day before. I said "Uh-oh, what's that?" and knelt down to check it out. Harper did the same, touched it, and said "Spidah poop."


Bye-bye Mickey
For Harper and Erica's birthdays in September we went to Disneyland. She really loved all of it, but I'd say the highlight for her was meeting Mickey right before the fireworks on her birthday. I wondered if she would remember anything from the trip, even short term, but she still talks about "Tee-bell flying" (Tinkerbell), "Dinneylan", and Mickey on a regular basis.

A few weeks ago Harper and I were walking on the sidewalk and I pointed out a low airplane to her. "Airpane, airpane, airpane!" She was jumping up and down, very excited. Then all of a sudden she hung her head, sighed, and said as morosely as possible, "Bye-bye, Mickey."


Happy Crickamacka!
At Costco last week we were surprised to see all of Christmas decorations out. Harper especially loved the small carousel and all the snowmen (which she pronounces snowmeeeeeen). I pointed to a lit Christmas tree and asked her what it was - "A tree." So I told her it's a Christmas tree, and asked if we should put one in our house (this was her absolute favorite thing about Christmas last year). "YEAH!" she said, "A Crickamacka tree!!" I laughed so hard, and in the car the next day I talked about Thanksgiving and Christmas, and what we do on each holiday. I told her Erica was coming for Thanksgiving, and we eat lots of yummy food, and talk about things we like. Before I could get very far on Christmas, Harper yelled "Happy Crickamacka!!!"