Her energy is limitless and comes out of nowhere. MJ simply has to dance; she can't get around it, and I can't get enough of it. She has to be the worst -- and therefore, the best -- dancer I've ever seen. Legs flail, arms punch, feet stomp, always at the same speed no matter the music. (I have no idea where she gets her complete lack of rhythm. Ahem.)

The other night, she was doing her patented spin-spin-spin-stomp move at bedtime at warp speed, like a horse on a carousel -- a real horse. Breakdancing doesn't seem like a very calm activity for a kid who has trouble sleeping to be doing before heading off to bed, so I demonstrated my best moves from my 9-year-old ballet class, placing a fingertip on the crown of my head and standing on my tippy toes while slowly, slowly turning in a circle.

"Now you try," I suggested.

And she did. She placed a dainty finger on top of her head, and spun around in a circle ... at breakneck speed, while stomping.

I can't wait for casting calls for "Dancing with the Toddlers."

I love the frenzied curiosity of this age, the constant need to test what your mind and body can do -- the small and sudden realizations, for her and for me, that she's only just tapped the well of experiences she'll have in her life. I think that's what her dance is all about. Unfortunately, I think that's what her tantrums are all about, too. Let's just hope the dancing lasts longer than the tantrums. In fact, let's go ahead and end those wretched things YESTERDAY. (Good lord, the drama ... Any day now I expect her to come down the stairs wearing the curtains from her bedroom, a la Scarlett O'Hara: "As God is my witness, I'll never go without juice before lunch again!" Although, technically, we would have to hang curtains in her bedroom first.)

She reminds me now of Emily Yeung, a little girl in Canada with her own TV show that's all about learning how to do very grown-up things. We discovered it while visiting Randy's parents one Christmas and fell in love with her. She's excited about everything she gets to try, from buidling a treehouse to swimming with sharks (I know! Crazy!). One of my favorite episodes is when she learns how to make bread at a pioneer village (the exact village where Randy once went as a child) and, while normally excruciatingly polite, can't wait to get the bread-making over with so she can go visit the horses out back. That on-to-the-next-thing mindset is pretty much how all my moments with MJ go these days ... only without the horses ... or the baking of bread.

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