Lucy says...

Dr. Lucy, Esq., has been vacillating wildly of late -- between a super-competent Miss Clavel on the one hand and the miserable victim of untold human rights violations on the other.

Every morning, she sneaks up on David and I, an old Dr. Brown's nipple hanging from her lips. Squeak! Squeak! Oh, good morning my little mouse! She demands a spot in the bed -- "in the middle!" And then she waits for sounds of life from the babies' room. Aha! Hop!

"Hello babies!"

The scream with delight.

"No screaming!" she says sternly. "Or I'm not coming in!"

But then, oh dear... Margaret pushes her down and Josephine steps on her hair and it's just too terrible to bear. The hysterics! On our way home from Cape Cod, stuck between the two tiny terrorists for hour after hour, Lucy finally exclaimed, "You are hurting my feelings!!" Dramatic pause.

"You are breaking my heart!!"

Another funny thing: While we were up there, Lucylu relied on my 18-year-old niece to carry her over the 6-inch deep tidal pools and then announced, "Sarah saved me from a watery grave!"

She hates to clean up. She loves lipstick. She says she has scary dreams -- last night it was about Ursula, who might be a seamstress?? She makes up her own songs, and can write her own name, and likes to play games with letters and words. But she can't possibly sleep by herself. "Do you remember when you stayed with me the whole night? At Cape Cod? That was amazing..." She still likes olive loaf. But she has changed her mind about squash. "I liked that when I was just a baby. I'm not a baby anymore."

She says she can't be best friends with her best friend, who is black. "I have to be best friends with somebody white," she says. But why, Lucy?? She can't explain. No, nobody told her that. That's just the way it is. Yesterday she took my hand at school and proudly exclaimed, "I got the elephant hose today! I did just what Daddy said. I said, 'Sylvie, it's my turn!' And I got the elephant hose!"

I wish I could remember everything she says because it's all so funny. I forget too much.

She's getting big. And she tells me so all the time.