My niece is deep in her Disney princess phase, the kind that takes over her whole tiny world. Every day she walks around clutching her princess toys like they’re her closest friends. Tonight we watched The Little Mermaid, the old 90s one, and she stared at Ariel with this wide-eyed seriousness that made me laugh quietly. She knows their names, but she insists on calling all of them mishomisho. One name for every princess. Somehow it fits. Somehow it feels like the kind of logic only a one-and-a-half-year-old can invent.
There’s something so sweet about watching her fall in love with characters before she even understands stories. She doesn’t follow the plot, she follows colors, music, movement. Ariel swims, she claps. Belle twirls, she twirls. She hugs her toys like she’s part of their world. Next week I’m taking her to the Disney shop to buy her a princess dress. I already know she’ll choose it with the seriousness of a queen picking her gown. I’ll pretend I’m not melting, but I will be.
She has her own language for everything. Grapes are appelo. Princesses are mishomisho. Half the time I don’t know what she’s saying, but I love that she’s building her own dictionary, her own tiny universe. She’s only one and a half, but she already names things with this confidence that makes me want to write everything down before she grows out of it. These small, made-up words feel like the softest part of her childhood, the part I want to remember.
