How Oranges Ruined My Life

Okay, maybe that's a little dramatic ... But oranges have definitely proven a stumbling block to my child.

 (this is how she watches Elmo sometimes ... I have no idea why)

Chiara's vocabulary is multiplying and replenishing our apartment. She says new things every day that make me think, "How did you ever pick up on that??" Words like purse, dip, and boy* just kind of snuck up on me.

(*Quick story: There was a little 4-ish-year-old boy sitting in front of us this morning in church. She was giggling with him and shamelessly flirting. At one point he suddenly poked his head down so she couldn't see him anymore and she laughed as she sang, "Bo-y!" (with two notes, the first higher than the second) in her most girly, high-pitched voice ... I thought Eldon and I were going to perish from laughter.)

We're teaching her the colors, so now she officially knows yellow, orange, red, blue, purple, black, and green. She gets stuck on why pink isn't red and brown isn't black, but other than that she can always tell you what's what.

Keeping that in mind, she loves oranges. Oranges oranges oranges. Eldon had an interview for med school in Arizona and brought home two entire boxes of oranges. Happy day! So that's basically all we eat. And it hadn't occurred to me before yesterday that this would throw off her groove at all.

But suddenly in her world, orange was a color and a food. Woah. So she started calling other foods by color as well. Vitamins are yellow (lello). Apples are sometimes red (raa). But because I'm a little bit of an idiot I hadn't realized that when she was chanting purple at me that she was actually asking for something.

"Pu-poh! Pu-poh!" she would tell me as I cooked dinner.

"Oh, do you see something purple? Where is it, Honey?" I'd respond, celebrating my gentle and patient mothering abilities.

"Pu-poh!" she'd repeat, a little more emphatically. If I'm honest with myself she might even have been tugging on the door of the fridge.

"Where is purple, Babes? I don't see any purple."

By this time Chiara would typically do one of two things: give up, or get mad. All she wanted was grapes, and Mommy was holding out on her.

"PU-POH!!!!!"

Nope. I didn't get it. This was not one of my finer parenting moments. Usually I'm like the friggin' Urim and Thummim. Back when grapes were "nummies" I knew. Before that when they were just a little dance in front of the fridge, I knew. Now I know. Purples are grapes. Poor thing. I blame the oranges. What a confusing name for a fruit.

P.S. "Weenow" is fork. That one took me a while. :)