Julia-I-Am

Last night during dinner, Julia put on quite the entertaining comedy act for Madeleine. I have never heard Madeleine laugh so hard or with such delight. This was way beyond your typical "A-boo!" response. I'm not even really sure what she found so amusing, but for whatever reason, it really did the trick. Here's what Julia was doing: she would run to one corner of the room and exclaim, "Would you like me over here?" which would result in squeals of delight and absolutely raucous laughter from Madeleine. Followed by Julia running to another corner of the room and repeating, "Would you like me over here?" Same response from Madeleine, but up a notch. This went on and on and it just didn't get old for either child - for Julia, the appeal was in making Madeleine laugh and the pride such a feat instilled in her, and for Madeleine, well, who knows. For some reason she just found it positively hilarious. And Ethan and I were pleased too, not just with the happy image of our children playing together, but also because it allowed him to finally finish a story that was interrupted twice earlier in the day; once because of Julia interjecting a million (unrelated) questions, and again later by her pushing the button for her ABC song on her fridge magnet set and then bellowing along with it at the top of her lungs. When the whole routine was over with, Julia decided to explain her motivation behind the idea: "Mom, do you know why I was saying would you like me over here? You know how in Green Eggs and Ham Sam-I-Am says would you like them here or there? Well, I decided to say to Madeleine, would you like me over here, just like Sam-I-Am says in Green Eggs and Ham." I then asked her who she was pretending to be when she said that, wondering if she was imagining herself as Sam-I-Am, or perhaps as the plate of green eggs and ham itself. Her response was: "A cat." Okay, not necessarily the answer I expected... although I wonder, is Sam-I-Am a cat? I wouldn't put it past her to come up with a TOTALLY random answer in response to any question I ask, but I think I'll give Julia the benefit of the doubt on this one.