Maggie is a verbal kid, talking pretty much all the time. She’s generally an effective communicator, conveying her points successfully, even if she doesn’t ultimately get what she wants. (So many foiled plans, resulting in extravagant drama.)

One quirk of language with her recently is that she has trouble with words relating to the past and future, especially today, yesterday, and tomorrow. She knows what they mean, and can use them in sentences, but she seems bothered by their fluidity: tomorrow becomes today becomes yesterday. To get around this, she’s taken to a using the phrase “this day” to indicate today. Then she adds events with before or after until she clarifies what she means.

Here’s an example that we just heard in the car—she’s excited about her grandparents’ visit tomorrow:

“Mama, this day, after we sleep and wake up, is it grandma and grandpa day?”

No reason to share this other than that Sarah and I think it is unbearably cute, and we know it will fade away in time and we’ll never quite remember how she worded it.

Update: I’ve since been listening to Maggie using this construction and noticed that she also has an alternative to the word yesterday: “last day.” She might say, for example, “Daddy, last day, did you go to school?”