Is there anything sweeter than that stage of a little girl's life where, in her mind, everyone and everything deserves kisses?

Cj is very generous with kisses. She kisses hello. She kisses good-bye. She kisses good morning, and she kisses goodnight.

She'll blow kisses to total strangers. You should see her as we're leaving the bank! She's tossing kisses to the tellers, the customers, the security guards, even the ATM if it happens to say something as we pass. She tosses kisses as freely and enthusiastically as a newly-crowned Miss America facing a hoard of admirers, and the press.

And she has THE most kissable lips. She doesn't simply purse her lips, she puckers up with all the force tiny two-year-old face muscles can muster, and she'll hold it until satisfied the kiss is complete, which usually means sound effects are involved. If there's no smack, the kiss doesn't count.

Recently, she's take to spontaneous kissing. While reading a story or watching TV, she'll sudden take it upon herself to reach for a face ... mine, Mark's or Sam's, usually, but Grandma gets it, too ... pucker like made, then plant kiss after kiss on cheeks, lips and noses.

She's pretty tidy about it, too, and doesn't leave much in the way of slobber trails after kisses ... although the snotty nose she had last week left its mark on all of us.

Sam, affectionate a child as he has always been, was never as free with kisses as Cj now is. Up until very recently he has been graciously accepting of kisses and would dole them out when asked to, but grab a face and kiss away? No way!

(He's getting cagy about kisses now, finds it funny to turn us down when we make kiss requests of him and will dodge even well-aimed ones to have them land on his nose or ear. The goodnight, kisses, however, remain high on his hit parade of favorite bedtime routines.)

So, it seems it's more a girl thing ... or, perhaps it's just a Cj thing.

Mark's hoping it wears off well before she hits puberty. I'd like to think she'll be wanting to kiss us for a long time after that ... and that we'll be around to be kissable!

Photo: © 2007 SH Benoiton
Cj kissing her new strange-leopard-faced-pillow thing. What a welcome!


There are Love Thursday posts all over the blogs. Here are others from me, and here's a one from Jenna with a really cute photo.