T is for Tovi

The world of Tovi......
Her great grandma gave her a book of nursery rhymes with animated pictures that she wants to penetrate--literally. After all, the apples are ripe in the picture and if only she could get in there and pick some.
"We will be able to pick apples in just a few months....."
"But I want these ones," she protests. And she stomps her feet on the picture in an attempt to jump into the book.
The next day as I folded laundry, she opened the same book up to her favorite page, where Miss Muffet sits beside an apple tree. Tovi knocks on the book, presses on it with the palm of her hand and again, stamps on it with her foot.
"Tovi, what are you doing?" I ask.
"I can't get in the book!"

Later that day, she shows me her owie. I tell her that it will go away in a short time. She says "Yes. It will fly away," and she flaps her wings like a bird. "My owie will fly away!"


Later still that day, after Nakiah and Tovi had a war with the water hose, I sent Tovi in for dry clothes and continued to work in the garden. She returned a moment later, bouncing around me while I planted tomatoes. I looked up to see Tovi had managed to get a shirt on but had nothing on her lower half, and she was jumping bottom first into my mounds of dirt.
"Where are your undies?"
"They ran away!" Tovi replied, as surprised as could be at the fact.

Undies run, owies fly, but she can't seem to penetrate the pages of her book.

Later still that day, Tovi bolted past me in the kitchen into the dining room. I quickly heard a thud and she came running back, screaming, with a trickle of dark red blood running down her forehead. She apparently took a head dive into the corner of her short art table, which punctured her in the middle of the forehead. It was deep, but, thankfully, not large enough to merit stitches. Whew!
She proudly admired the "star-shape" on her forehead after she calmed down, but Nakiah and I agree it looks more like a crescent moon, and almost forms a T.
For Tovi.