No foolin'

I know that today is usually the day for elaborate pranks and jokes, but I wanted to do something different. Instead, I'm going to share a bunch of things about myself that might sound too good to be true, but are in fact 100 percent real! Here goes:

I sleep with the door closed. It's true! It took Dad almost half a year to transition me from being rocked to sleep by him or Mom, to having him leave alone me in my room with the door closed, but that's what's been going on for the past few weeks. There were a lot of steps along the way:
1) I insisted on holding Dad's hand while I fell asleep, so he had to lie on the ground next to the crib and hold my hand through the slats.
2) No more handholding, but Dad sat on a chair next to the crib but stil had to touch my head or back with his hand.
3) Dad moved the chair a few feet back from the crib, so no more touching.
4) Dad moved the chair a few more feet back.
5) Dad moved the chair back until it was right in front of the bedroom door, but still inside the bedroom (I backslid a little at this point).
6) Dad moved the chair out to the hall and sat there with the door open so I could watch him.
7) Finally, Dad convinced me to go to sleep with the door closed because I'm a "big girl." And I am! The chair is still out in the hall, and I see Dad sitting in it while he closes the door. So I assume that he sits in it all night long while I sleep.

I'm sleeping through the night — and sleeping in! Hand-in-hand with the above, I'm sleeping through the night almost every single night (I've only been up once or twice the past month). And while I go to bed a little later than I used to — closer to 9 now than 8 — I'm also averaging close to 11 hours a night, up from 10 hours. So now I get up around 8 instead of 6 or 6:30. It's almost cruel in a way, to give Mom and Dad a little taste of a full night's sleep for a couple months until my brother arrives to take it all away again!

I watch TV. Remember how Mom and Dad vowed I wouldn't watch TV till I was older? Well I guess I'm older now because I watch a little bit every day. You'd expect Sesame Street, but no, it's usually Barney, Angelina Ballerina (which I call "Mishka," the Ukranian word for mouse), Thomas and Friends and The Good Night Show. Pretty much everything on PBS Kids Sprout on Demand.

I like joking. I learned the phrase "just joking" from Dad the other week. I like to joke, for example I tell Dad during the day that I want to go to sleep. Of course I'm not going to sleep when it's light out...I'm just joking! Or when Dad asks me every morning if I'm going to be good for Bobbi and Dido, and I say no. Then I smile. Or when I pretend to be choking during meals because it turns Mom into a basket case. But I also like when other people joke, like Gus, who owns the diner in town that I go to every week. He's always joking with me. On Saturday he tried to get into my highchair, and every week he comes and goes bang-bang on my plate. So silly!

I know colors, numbers and letters. I can recognize and say all of the following colors: blue, red, green, orange, yellow, purple, pink, white, black, brown and grey. I can also count from 1 to 10 (I've come a long way from "1, 2, 8, 10"!), and I know about 90 percent of the alphabet. I think I'm ready to apply to Yale!

I went pee-pee on the potty! Okay, that last one was a joke. It is April Fools Day after all! But I swear everything else here is entirely true.