"You keep using that word...I do not think it means what you think it means"

"Let's have dreams," my daughter says to me, in a winning and breathy voice. She wants us to "have dreams" every night when I tuck her in, which means that she wants me to snuggle down, and whisper soothingly to her some beautiful image of what we will dream about that night. For a long time, the image was of us swimming in a pool of water at the bottom of a waterfall, while birds and butterflies flitted overhead. Whatever the scene, I have to describe it in great detail, with colors and sounds, and not omitting to mention the feeling of the wind rushing through our hair as we ride on the backs of our unicorns towards the rainbow.

Tonight she wanted something new. "Flowers," she said, nestling closer to me.

So I began to set the scene for her: "we are in the middle of a beautiful meadow..." I began. "Do you know what a meadow is?" I asked quietly.

She sat bolt upright in bed. "Meadow? Oh, yes," she said, matter-of-factly. "I think it's when you get stuck, fwozen, on a mewwy-go-wound and can't get off."

She clearly wasn't sure why I was laughing so hard, but she was happy to laugh right along with me. So I explained what a meadow was, and all about our picnic that we took there. ("But we don't step on any of the flowers," she said, "because that would smoosh them." "Right," I said.)

And then I tucked her in and gave her the special kisses on her eyelids and came downstairs.

But now I can't stop giggling over her definition of "meadow," and thinking that really, this child would be extraordinary if I could get her to play Dictionary with me (which I might try next time we have a rainy afternoon).

We've had funny pronunciations of actual words before, of course. The current one is that she insists on referring to her armpits as "armpets," and no matter how many times her brother tells her that they are not "pets" of any kind, she insists that she knows that, thank you, but they are armpets.

He's hardly one to call her on it, given that he continually refers to our movies-in-the-mail service as "NetFlake" and that a week or so ago, he gleefully told me that he knows why Ritz Bits are called Ritz Bits.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because they are Rits, and when you take a bite of them, then you spit some out."

"What?!" I said. "You do not spit them. What are you talking about?"

"Well, not in the car," he admitted. "You don't spit them in the car. But," he was serenely confident, "they are Rits and you do Spit them. Rit Spits. See?"

Truly, moments like these are hilarious.

But there is something even better about the definition inventing that Daughter had been doing lately. (Her effort with "meadow" is not the first time she has done such a thing, but of course it's the first time I've been in a position to be able to write it down immediately so that I wouldn't forget.) It comes with such complete confidence in herself. She has a quiet and absolute sense that she knows what words mean. All words. Any word you ask her about. And she has an almost uncanny ability to make up crazy definitions on the spot without apparently thinking about them at all. I hope that confidence follows her as she grows, and the creativity too, and the joy in the play of language.

And so I try hard not to laugh at her, to chuckle gently, to laugh only with her.

Who knows? She could turn out to be the next Lewis Carroll, inventing whole universes full of Jabberwocky to entertain us all.