In which we discover that Lily is really a V with plans of mass human annihilation

Scene: We're at Burger King, watching President Obama pardon the turkey. Neither of my children are wearing shoes and the smell of boiling fat permeates the air. BTW, Burger King is where we go for all of our sociopolitical enrichment. We're classy that way.

Me: "Do you guys see those girls behind the president? Those are his daughters. Wouldn't it be weird if your dad was president?"

Sam: "Um, the way it would *really* go, Mommy, is that *you'd* be the president and I'd have to call you 'mommy president' and we'd live in the white house."

Me: "You make a very good point."

Sam: "But can girls even be president?"

Me: "Not that it's apparent historically speaking, but absolutely girls can be the president."

Sam: "Huh. Lily, do you want to be the president?"

Lily: [thinks for a moment.] "What I want is to be a giant and then to tower SO HIGH that I'm a voice in the sky. And I'll BOOM. I'll say 'PEOPLE! LISTEN!' And then I'll mush them."

My baby is not only a friggin genius, she's, like, a friggin *artist*

There were some flip flops on sale for fifty cents, so I bought them and then gave them to Lily along with a tube of paint. (Pink paint, of course. Lily thinks that pink is the ONLY color worth loving.)

This was what she created:

Holy Crap my baby is a GENIUS!!

Scene: We're all sitting around a picnic table in the woods. Lily is bored because there is no television in the forest and without a television, she can't watch Barney. So, she comes and sits on my lap (only EXTREME boredom could possibly drive her to seek physical contact) and watches me write people's names on a paper plate. After a bit, she starts suggesting people for me to write. Then she gets bored with me writing and grabs the pen out of my hand.

I figure she'll scribble for awhile, since that's what babies do. I start to engage in grown up conversation. Something very mature like who passes gas more often at night or who thinks that hiking naked is a super fun idea.

After a minute, though, I look down at the paper plate and see that Lily has written this:




Now, I'm not hallucinating, right? My itty-bitty can-hardly-talk 26-month-old baby did just create a readable likeness of her own name, right? Without me ever really teaching her how or drilling her with flashcards the way my parents did when I was a baby?!



Oh my goodness, the kid might just be able to make good on her plans for world domination!! Be AFRAID!