Little Einsteins

OK, OK, I admit it.  I'm biased, I'm prejudiced, I have no objectivity at all when it comes to my four nephews (all wonderful and brilliant young men), or their wives, (fine young women, 99.9999% worthy of them), and I am ready to accept the girlfriends of the unmarried ones, too.  Right after they pass the IQ and integrity exams, followed by the grueling obstacle course in Quantico. 

But all of these over protective feelings  pale in comparison to those I have for this angel pictured here, A______, my great-niece.  Certainly pretty, as stubborn and pig-headed as anyone with Pennsylvania German blood flowing in their veins OUGHT to be -- but also musical and intelligent.  Yet her intelligence has a strange little bent.  In other words, she fits right in with our family.  She was 2 years old in December 2011.

I knew she was her mother's daughter at first, because she likes dresses.  I would have worn jeans to my high school prom if I could have found a dress made of denim.  But, not to worry, because she's musical like I am, and has my will of iron. and a temper.  I pray she doesn't go through everything I had to go through to learn to control it!

Anyway, she is a real mother to her dolls, so she's one up on me in that department.  When I was even older than two, my dolls often found themselves upside down in a corner with extremities askew and bald patches.  Hers are all named, in bed, and covered up.  Completely, even heads, faces.  When they sleep they look like a line of corpses in a morgue, but they will never catch a draft!  And if you have the audacity to uncover a face here and there, or a nose to peek out for oxygen, she will squeal, run over, and cover the offending face again.  Cadavers, every last one.

She's been watching Little Einsteins, lately.  I've never seen the show myself, but I understand that music plays a part.  Some are the classics that I love, Vivaldi, Mozart, Beethoven, Handel.  Amazing.  A________ LIKES the music.  My nephew was out with her in the car driving one day and she requested daddy put on "Little Einstein music."  Yes, she wished to hear the classics.  So now he's gone out and purchased some of the music for them to listen to.

Recently she named her feet.  Please keep in mind she is TWO YEARS OLD.  One foot is named Ella (for Ella Fitzgerald, I think?) and the other Sousa -- for John Philip Sousa, the composer.  I kid you not.  Not long after the christening, her feet were banging against each other and making spectacles of themselves.  When questioned she told her mother that Ella and Sousa were "fighting".  How cute is that?  And creative!

To continue to gush with just one more story -- today my sister, her grandmother, wrote me the latest A______ story.  They had been at the playground, and after they'd left and were driving home in the car, it began to rain.

"Rain, rain, go away,
Come again another day," they sang together.

 Then Little Einsteins raised its head again.  A_______ said "Let's sing it again, only this time, louder -- you know ... CRESCENDO!"

How are we ever going to keep up with this child?