True originals

Changes can be - well, among other things, they can be challenging. Think of the students at the Art Institute of Chicago, in 1913, enraged by the avant-garde experiments in the Armory Show and burning Matisse in effigy. Or, in the same year, the audience at the premiere of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, reportedly dividing itself into pro and anti factions and coming to blows. Or think, perhaps, of Marie-Anne de Cupis de Camargo, a controversial 18th-century ballet dancer who was better known as La Camargo and who became infamous for her short skirts, which revealed her calves, and her virtuosic footwork. Such a gesture, notes Jennifer Homans in her terrific history of ballet, raised eyebrows, and was widely seen as immodest.

Immodest might be one way to describe a relatively recent change in Cleo's behavior, too. Why does the girl pick her nose with such constant and focused attentiveness? It's not that L. and I form an anti faction, exactly - but we are surprised by a behavior that seems so, um, un-princess-like. But then, we're surprised by all sorts of things, when it comes to our 4-year-old. Did she really read herself to sleep this evening, poring over words in a Richard Scarry anthology and then lying down on a pillow and under a blanket? She did. And did she really use the word shortening correctly the other day? She did - as a way of making sure that the Storyboard P. dance I was showing her on the computer wouldn't cut into her allotted 25 minutes of Monsters U. Is this shortening the time for my video? No, Cleo, it's not - but, more importantly, when exactly did you learn to speak so ambitiously?

So at times we can be - we all can be - taken aback by change. And yet, of course, changes are what make innovation and development possible. Despite the controversies and shocked speculations that swirled around La Camargo, her desire to foreground her brilliant technical skills soon altered the basic landscape of ballet: as Homans notes, she "inadvertently shifted the course of ballet and pointed it toward the nineteenth century, when the ballerina would eventually replace the danseur as the summit of the art."

That said, I'm still not sure how a suddenly tenacious regime of nose-picking will shift the course of anything. But, given that I don't want to burn another Matisse in effigy, I suppose that I would be a fool to mock such a turn. So dig deep, Cleo, and read on, until you're so tired that you want to lie down. Keep trying new things, and don't listen to the nags in the back rows. I promise, in turn, that even your boldest new efforts won't shorten your time with Mike and Sully, unless you want them to, by a single minute.