"I was a baby first"

More conversations from this week:

(while reading a book with a monkey in it)

Anja: We don't have any monkeys around here. We can buy some. At the store!

(While buying some baby supplies at the store today I put some pacifiers in the cart. Anja hasn't had a pacifier in at least a year)

Anja: Ooooohhhh... I LIKE pacifiers!!! I LIKE them. I LIKE pacifiers!!!

Me: That's what I was afraid of

and:

Anja: What's that?

Me: That's a bouncy seat. For baby Maija.

Anja: (sad, pitiful voice) I'm a baaabyyyy...

Anja has been very insistent all weekend that she is a baby, and not a big girl. She also told me today that baby Maija can't sleep in the pack 'n play we have set up, because it's still hers.

And she was really sad about not being allowed to sit in the bouncy seat, because she's too big. ("I'm little!") I tried to explain that big kids can do a lot of things that babies can't, like play with playdoh, but she wasn't interested in any of that. So I told her that she can be a baby sometimes if she wants. She doesn't seem upset that Maija is coming, she just wants to be able to use all the baby toys and clothes too.