The case of the missing doppelganger

1. Over Shabbat we had friends over who have a daughter named Kinneret. Since they were originally supposed to come the week before (before one of them got sick), Rimonit basically went around for two weeks saying: "Have two Ki's!"

Fast forward to yesterday morning. I hear Rimonit saying "Eifo Rimonit?" and think at first that she is covering her face, with one of my scarves maybe, and initiating a game of peekaboo (which I think she picked up from Kinneret, since she hadn't really been doing that until K started initiating it, minus the words). But then I look over and she isn't covering her face with anything - she's standing there seeming vaguely perturbed, and not satisfied with being told that there she is.

"Where another one Rimonit?" she wanted to know. Repeatedly. She finally informed me that the other Rimonit's house was in my closet, and that seemed to settle the matter. It was all vaguely surreal. Warren thinks she's certain Kinneret pulled one over on her by digging up a second Ki (actually, Kiki, in her case), even if she's not entirely sure what K gained from it, and she's trying to pull even...

2. Things Rimonit has taken to doing recently: being a lion, a dog and an airplane (not all at once, though I wouldn't put that past her - she has been known to eat a hummus and peanut butter sandwich, and to add pasta to her hummus-cheese-tuna-egg sandwich). With the lion and the dog, she generally alternates between spotting the animal, say, in the kitchen (lion or dog) or on every landing of the stairwell (lion), and being the animal, which of course involves barking/roaring. I've noticed she also likes it to move around - after all, she doesn't stay in one place, so why should her animals?

She seems to be playing with her quasi-imaginary gan friends a bit less these days, but reports from gan indicate she's playing with her actual gan friends more, so I'm counting that as a net gain. It seems like having had one of her pals over for her birthday party was a bit of a turning point for both of them - before that, R had talked about Ofri and pretended to play with her, but they're both on the quiet side when in gan and while I was told they'd whisper together while waiting to be picked up, they weren't hanging out all the time or anything. Since the birthday party, though, they've reportedly been really living it up in gan, and R has also been doing some imaginary play with dolls and such with other girls in gan. The ganenet says she's much more open and talks more to the adults as well as the kids.

3. And speaking of birthday parties, Rimonit's having another one tomorrow morning at gan. They didn't want to have bday parties until after the hagim, so they randomly picked tomorrow to do it. It'll be a party for her and twin boys who she likes to play with. Boy, does Rimonit like birthdays!!! I made sure to point out that she's still 3. So far she hasn't asked for Rosh Hashana and Sukkot to come back because it's her birthday again, which is good because when she wanted to know Eifo Roshana? Eifo sukkah? Eifo shofar?, we told her they were sleeping but they would wake up next year, when she had another birthday and was 4. She told me the other day that Shabbat was sleeping, and when I agreed, she asked the perfectly logical next question: "Where Shabbat bed?"

4. And speaking of beds, Kinneret's latest trick is pummeling me out of it. She's little, but the girl knows how to get things done! Why stand there and cry when you can prod Ima's head and arms, pull Ima's hair and generally make it quite clear that sleeping time is over (even if it only just began)? And she somehow manages to do it all in such a sweet way.

She also loves to tap-dance! (without those shoes, though.) It's kind of this fast shuffling of the feet. And she understands the word "dancing," often performing when she hears it, even if there's no music. (Rimonit's favored forms of dancing are jumping up and down heavily, like an elephant, and turning around in circles. They also like to dance holding hands sometimes.)