Loves Me Like a Rock

She has a dozen My Little Ponies, a hundred dolls to choose from and close to $100,000 worth of miscellaneous books and games and dress-up clothes. She has a playset in the yard, a trike, a wagon, two brothers to entertain her and a daddy who will get on all fours and pretend to be a dog all afternoon just to make her laugh.

And she plays with rocks.

My daughter comes home from school with pockets FULL of rocks. We went for a nature hike, and she collected nothing but rocks. Same thing at the garden centre, except we had to put THOSE rocks back because, "no no honey, you have to PAY for garden centre rocks" (they call it pea gravel, but its still 'rocks' to me.) She cried when her brother touched her "special" rock that, frankly, looked like every other one of her 34 identical grey rocks. She gives me handfuls of rocks as gifts, and leaves rocks all over the house. My washing maching and dryer are currently full of, you guessed it, rocks.

I asked her today what it was with her and rocks, and she said "I just yike them."

I asked her if maybe she thought they were pretty, and she laughed at me and said "Nooo" like I was a little slow.

So I said that maybe they looked a lot like jewels, and she said "Nooo" like I was abundantly stupid.

"So, you just yike them because you yike them?" I asked.

"Yup." She grinned, and then she left a handful of rocks on my bed and ran away.

So I am still puzzled, but as far as preschool obsessions go, rocks are kinda sweet and it's cheap to maintain and at least she's not eating them. By the way, I just looked up what a geologist makes: $70,000 to $109,000 per year. Hmm, Nattie, you keep yiking those rocks honey!