Idaho is too far away.

As I may have mentioned once before, my baby cousin has moved overseas to study (because she's a genius and stuff).

From the time Brat was 3 months old, my cousinl, I'll call her J (because that's what her name starts with), was her babysitter almost 1 a week for years.

Brat never showed any good reaction to J for most of those years. Just seeing J come in the door caused Brat to shout things like "No." and "I hate you." and "You're Makka Pakka!" (that one never made much sense to me).

Now that J is overseas though, Brat is asking us all the time, "Why isn't J coming over? Why can't she see J? Why can't they play barbies?" etc.

We've explained to Brat several times about the ocean, about time zones, countries, land mass and so on. She always LOOKS like she understands, and implies understanding ("So that's why Auntie C only comes once a year").

Tonight, Brat was at it again. Bugging my husband to call J and ask J to come over. D explained (again) that J is in England. Then he explained that England is close to Scotland (where Auntie C is). Then he said it's close to where all the old castles are, and the princesses lived there. And that you have to take a plane, for 12 hours to get there. That it's further than gramma and grampa (which Brat recognizes as being "plane-far" away). Still she was adamant. She wanted to see J.

So D told her, "It's further than Noisy- Boise Idaho" (I once threatened to send her to Idaho because she was so noisy). She accepted THAT without a qualm. In her mind, the furthest anyone can get from anything, or anyplace, is Idaho. It might as well be the moon for my spacial-ly challenged 5 year old.

Brat misses you J. We all miss you.