What Happened In Her Bowl

I love watching Meg struggle to express herself. Her vocabulary is pretty impressive now, for a three-year old, but, of course, she's still quite limited compared to the rest of us. So we never know how she, observing the world through such new eyes, might verbalize something that seems quite ordinary to us. Two days ago at breakfast was a great example.

As we began our meal, I shook a small amount of frosted bite-sized shredded wheat into Meg's bowl. Shredded wheat is filling stuff--she can't eat as much of it as she can other cereals. And because the bowl wasn't very full, she had a clear view as I added in the milk. (She always likes to watch to see that I get enough in there.) After she supervised my milk-pouring, she got busy with something else for a moment--probably munching slices of pear. Then she pulled her bowl toward her and brandished her spoon. Suddenly, Meg cried out, "Mommy, what happened?"

"What, Sweetie?"

"Wh... what happened in my bowl?"

I glanced at the cereal. I had a hunch what she meant, but I wanted Meg to tell me herself. "What do you mean, Sweets? What do you mean, what happened in your bowl?" She stared down into the depths of the vessel in her hands. I could hear her mental gears turning as she searched for the right words to explain this phenomenon.

"My milk got tiny!" she finally exclaimed.

I grinned. "Is there less milk in there than there was a minute ago?"

"Yes," she replied, concern etched on her face.

So then I tried to explain about how shredded wheat absorbs a lot of liquid--quite a bit more than, say, Cheerios. I don't know if she understood, but at least I was able to comfort her about the apparent disappearing milk.

My milk got tiny. Too cute.