Charleigh: Living Out Loud

My Little Red-Haired Girl named Charleigh will turn 2.5 at the end of the month, and she's quite come into herself. I used to worry that her older sister would overshadow her, which, at it turns out, was a laughable concern.

Charleigh, in the words of Emile Zola, is here to live out loud. See?

Charleigh takes great delight in making her housemates yell. She's a terrific tease, and it makes no nevermind to her that, among us, she's second to smallest. She knows the spankable offenses and commits them, anyway, because they're fun and, in her estimation, worth it.

She's a scrapper. She's been known to bite, pull hair, ride her older siblings as though they were horses, kick, and hit. She loves to climb and, to show for it, has bulging calf muscles and all manner of bruises. At the moment, she sports a fading goose egg on her forehead and a sidewalk scrape on her wrist. Her front teeth are chipped.

She's apt to lean over the side of the grocery cart and hock a spontaneous loogie onto the floor of a Walmart Supercenter.

She's put more foreign objects and poisonous substances in her mouth than her three siblings put together and multiplied by sixteen. In this respect, she's worked her guardian angel (and her mama) hard. She bites her nails and scrapes polish right off with her two, front teeth.

She can wink, and she can bust a move. She hugs with ferocity and names all her baby dolls after herself. If you'll let her, she'll wear high heels in the bathtub, but she won't keep a ponytail for nothin. She makes a person want to write in double negatives and drop g's as though it's the Wild, Wild West.

 
Last night, before we could snatch her up, she interrupted our pastor to announce: "I'm a dancer. I'm a star. I'm a beautiful princess. I'm a super hero."

She pretty much hates Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, Chuck E. Cheese, Yogi Bear, and all manner of costumed nonsense. But she's plumb crazy over her papaw, which is saying something, and she's stolen his heart like none other, which is saying even more.