The Quotable Annika

--"Cheercleader"

Her interpretation of "cheerleader." Don't know why the extra "c," but it's hilariously cute.

--"Lightning the Queen"

A main character in Cars, which we guess she's seen at babysitting night. Actually supposed to be "McQueen," as in Steve, but this is way funnier.

--"It's a bird party!"

What she says when we see these immense flocks of birds (gulls? pigeons? sometimes definitely geese ...) flying around and around in circles. I think she got it from Go Dog Go!, which has been in a box in the garage since we moved.

--Cake movie quotations: "Another fun way is ...", "What I'm gonna do is, I'm gonna ...", "crumb coat," "slice off the dome," etc.

Background: Well over a year ago, we were waiting FOREVER in the pharmacy at Kaiser for a prescription on a holiday weekend, and she was starting to go batty. I pulled up YouTube on my iPhone, and a search for videos of cute little baby duckies, kittens riding a Roomba, and puppies sleeping in big ol' piles of fuzzy puppies somehow eventually led to this six-minute instructional video from the Betty Crocker Test Kitchens on how to make and assemble a castle cake (i.e. a cake in the shape of a castle, with turrets and whatnot). She watched it several times, then our prescription was finally ready and we left; I forgot about the video. Sometime in ... August or September of this year, she starts asking for my phone so she can watch her "cake movie." I finally figured out what she meant, and since I never watch YouTube on my own, it was still in the History. She watched it a bunch of times ... and then we discovered there were more of them. Like a dozen or more, all starring these same people (Lori Galvin, the gee-whiz how'd-ya-do-that? girl, and Liv somebody, the actual doer of the decorating, and source of most of the quotes). They are both SO IRRITATING, but Annika loves them, and having run through most of the rest of the millions of "cake movies" on YouTube, I've discovered they really are the pros -- the vids are produced, not shot on somebody's Flip cam at home, and you can actually follow their instructions. So now the kid is OBSESSED with "cake movies," and I've discovered I can get her to do quite an array of chores or tasks she doesn't want to do if the reward is that she gets to watch the damned things. I guess that makes it a win-win, even if I do still want to set fire to the Betty Crocker Test Kitchens AND HowdiniGuru.com ...