Twinkle In Your Eye

This child is our artsy-fartsy, free-spirit, creative, spontaneous child. With spunk. This is an example of how her mind functions: Quite some time ago, Sofia was asking about some particular event or person, the details have escaped me. She was, at that time in her life, always inquiring, "Was I alive yet when that happened?" I am not one to resort to cliches often in my life but for some reason, kind of dismissively said, "No, that was before you were even a twinkle in your Daddy's eye!" or "...when you were just a twinkle in your Daddy's eye!" Now, I should know, having children, that you must never say anything without anticipating a full 20-question interrogation about anything that they don't quite understand. This time, however, I was surprised that the conversation didn't go much farther than that. So I didn't give the conversation another thought. Now, if I would have, I shouldn't have been so foolish to think the lack of inquiry=the cliche somehow just flew by her, unnoticed. It only meant that she fully understood what that meant. Some time later, my husband told me that one day Sofi parked her face not too many inches from his, just staring intently into first one eye, then the other, then back to the first eye. She finally said, "I'm just trying to see if I can see a twinkle in your eye," or something to that effect. Again recently, when we were at the hospital one night after our baby was born, I saw Sofi perch herself right on Eric's knees and had her gaze just pierced into his eyes. She again was searching for that elusive twinkle, and asked, "Is there another twinkle in your eye?" That night after they got home, she finally said something like, "Now, I don't get it! How do you get that twinkle from in your eye into Mommy's tummy?" She then said, "I know, do you take it out and when Mom's not looking sneak it into her food and then she eats it and it gets stuck in her tummy and then a baby grows from it?" I'm not sure that my husband even found an answer to that!