Age-inappropriate humor

Now that we've covered all the bodily fluid stories about our trip to Chicago, can I tell you how funny my kid can be? Sure, some of it is funny in an uncomfortable way and some of it is funny in a that's-so-sad/mean-it's-funny way and some of it's funny in a you-guys-are-so-screwed-as-parents way, but it's all funny in the end. Like when we stripped my pee-soaked daughter down to her skivvies in the middle of downtown Chicago and she cried "Nakie!" and did her little nakie dance. She then said "Daddy nakie" and pointed to Nate, demanding he disrobe. And then "Nakie Mama, nakie auntie. Funny!" When we wouldn't do it, she was not a happy girl.

OK, maybe that wasn't so funny, but she thinks it is. I know this because she says "funny" after things that amuse her. Yesterday when a jerk cut me off and then gave me a snotty little backward mocking wave so that I was forced to flip him off, for example, Clementine declared it "funny. Mama funny." And when I dropped my water bottle trying to get her out of the car this morning and the cold water splashed all over my already-cold legs, "Funny!" She also thinks it's funny to point to my crotch and say penis, a word she learned shortly after starting to ask "Zat? (what's that?)" when Nate would get out of the shower. She seems too young for a physiology lesson, but I'm also scared to death of the day Julie at daycare has to sit me down to talk about how Clementine is pointing to all the boys' crotches and saying penis. Funny!

A lot of her humor is the geeky stuff that parents share with friends at dinner parties and for which they often receive blank stares. Clementine dancing, with her gyrations and "Oh yah!" at appropriate parts of the songs, makes me laugh for hours, but it's not like the humor shines through when I share the love by telling others. And most people don't understand the way I can hardly keep from laughing when she pitches a total fit over something small like me taking away a pencil. "Baby need," she'll cry pathetically. Baby needs water, food, shelter and love, lady. Not writing implements--let's work on your vocab a bit.

When we were on our way home from Chicago on Monday and she started getting fussy, I amused her with a game in which I pretended to remove my fingers (aren't mamas magic?) and put them back on. I was very impressed with how easily I calmed her down and got her to focus, interacting with me from time to time by picking out which fingers to remove and replace. But then. But then she started pulling at her own fingers and demanding "Baby fingers off." She kept pulling and demanding, all the while escalating her volume and frustration. "Baby fingers off!" And she was just about successful in ripping them from her hand. We explained to her that mama was pretending and I thought we eventually got over it, but twice over the last two days I've seen her start to grab at her hands again, demanding we help her pull her own fingers off.

Her other form of humor lately comes in the form of telling me the opposite of what I want to hear. She was telling me the other day that daddy is her buddy, and when I asked if mama was her buddy too she said no emphatically and then worked to repress a smile. "Well, who else is your buddy?" I asked, and she proceeded to go through everyone's name she knows: Yora buddy, Aunt K buddy, Tommy buddy, Abby buddy...and on and on. It's the same list I get when I ask her who loves her. Everyone but Mama. Isn't that funny?