Vanessa has some homemade laminated magazine pictures of kids at various ages doing various things with various facial expressions and such. They're quite worn out since we made them months ago but they've served well for a variety of reasons, so I hesitate to throw them out just yet. And now I'm glad I haven't!
While working puzzles and reading this afternoon, Vanessa pulled out one of the pictures of a toddler who is standing at the fridge door looking sad or possibly mad. The picture could imply several things, but the first two things that come to my mind when looking at it is that either the little girl is showing that she's really hungry or she's mad because she wants to play in the fridge. We can relate to both. Sometimes Vanessa tries to help herself to the milk and raisins in the fridge and other times she just wants to feel like a big person and get in there and reorganize the shelves.
So anyway, Vanessa came over to me with the picture, asking over and over with a very worried look on her face, "Mommy, she okay? Okay? Okay?" I was touched at how concerned she was for this little girl. Since Vanessa's most recent fridge occurrence had to do with not being able to get into the fridge to play, I decided to lead the discussion there. We talked about how mad she gets when she can't play in the fridge. Perhaps this little girls' mommy told her that she shouldn't play in the fridge and now she's mad, just like Vanessa gets sometimes. Vanessa must've related to that story well because when I was finished, she said in a cheerful and satisfied voice, "Okay . . ."
I chose to title this post Our Little Teapot because for several months now one of Vanessa's favorite songs is I'm a Little Teapot. She also has a book in which the song is wonderfully illustrated, another favorite of Vanessa's. The teapot getting hot and steaming up reminds me of Vanessa's temper, aside from the fact that in real life the teapot takes a few minutes to steam up -- Vanessa steams up in milliseconds.
And we just so happen to have a picture of Vanessa at the fridge. I took this a couple weeks ago when I was trying to capture the fact she can fill up an extra large cup with water all by herself. By the time I got the camera out and was ready to take the picture, Vanessa moved on to asking if she could get in the fridge.
