When She Grows Up...

I think most parents look at their kids every once in a while and make some guesses about what the future holds for them. I know I do. What are they going to be when they grow up? Over the past few months, my guesses for Penelope keep coming back to a career in the performing arts.

Is she gong to be a singer? She looooves to sing. She sings while she's playing, she sings in bed, she sings in the car, she sings while she's pooping. It isn't liks she's singing *all* the time, but every so often she will just break out in song unexpectedly. Sometimes it is a song that we all know well, and sometimes you'll recognize the tune, but she's made up her own words. A few nights ago at dinner, she sang her own Christmas song to the tune of London Bridge - "Santa Claus is loving you, loving you, loving you, Santa Claus is loving you, and he's Santa." And then sometimes it's just a random, Broadway-style show tune about whatever is bopping around in her little head at that time. Those are usually the most entertaining ones, because they involve a bit of interpretive dance and a large arm flourish or some jazz hands at the end. If you clap after one of those performances, she'll bow gracefully. And if you don't clap, she'll say "Clap everybody!", and then of course, you'll clap, and she'll bow gracefully.

Or maybe she'll be an actress... she's definitely got a flair for the dramatic. And she can instantly mold her face into nearly any emotion you might ask her to. Happy (of course), sad, angry, scared, serious, tired, bored... you name it. The only one you really have to watch out for is the sad puppy dog face.  

If you see that one, run. You never know what she's going to talk you into (I say "you" meaning "me"... Mommy is not quite the pushover that Daddy is). The faces show up unprompted most of the time, usually well-timed for a laugh. So maybe she's going to be a...

...comedian?  She has impeccable comedic timing. She's only three, so I have to believe it is accidental. But she has a knack for interjecting a word, sound, phrase (or face), etc. at just the right time. One of my favorite recent examples took place at dinner time. The kids had sat down at the table and we were getting ready to sit down too. Mommy and Daddy gave each other a kiss in the kitchen, and precisely when you'd expect it, from the table behind us we heard Penelope's voice, "Awww!" It was exactly the way you're hearing it in your head right now, complete with that little tongue click noise right before it. That's a sound she normally reserves for when she sees puppy dogs or anything built on a miniature scale, and probably the same noise she'd make if she could see herself half the time. When we started laughing, the entire family had the giggles for a while.