Valentines When You're Three

"Why do we send valentines?" I asked Elena as we were making cards on her magic carpet yesterday.

"Because we love peoples," she said.

I draw the hearts; she colors them. "But I can't make the words, Yenna!"

"I can make the words.  You just tell me what to say.  What do you want me to put on Daddy's valentine?"

"Happy Birthday," she said.  "And you're welcome.....And put I love you."

When her Aunt Day was exactly her age, she said "make" for "write," too.  One day she came home from Sunday School so excited as she wrote L O V E.  "Mrs. Gibbs taught us how to make love!" she said.

"Do you have a present for me?" Elena asked yesterday--eyeing the cabinet where she knows I hide presents.  I gave her a copy of The Wizard of Oz  and she "read" it in the car all the way to Helotes.

At this age, reading means looking at the pictures and asking questions.  "Why is that lion crying?" (He's a cowardly lion, I said.  He's afraid of everything.)

"Why he's afraid?" she asked.  "I'm not!  I'm not afraid of anything."

"Why is Toto jumping on that man?  Who is that man?  Is he the daddy?"

"He's the uncle.  Dorothy and Toto live with her uncle and Aunt Em."

"Why do they live with them and not their parents?"

"See how I'm not scared?  I can climb super high!" she says, as we are playing on Nathan's school playground.

But Nathan is not there; he's at his other house this week.  "I don't have another house," she said.  "But I used to have another house."

"Well, my house can be your other house," I say.

"Of course!" she says.  It's as easy as that.  Elena now has two houses, too, just like Nathan.