Our latest park outing

Unlike some other 2 year-olds I've read about, or even seen video clips of, Amelia doesn't try to eat or drink like the cats. She has been caught playing and even tasting the cat's food, but doing so in a very human-toddler way of hand-to-mouth. She also likes to dunk the toy mice in the cat's water dish, something one of our cats likes to do also. We try our best to teach Amelia not to engage in these behaviors, and most of the time it seems to work.

Today we were at the park and I noticed a small horse near the fence at the bottom of the hill so I brought it to Amelia's attention and asked her if she wanted to walk down and visit it. She was immediately interested - but I think it has something to do with the other four (big kid) swings that are down there. This suspicion was confirmed when I had to veer her toward the horse and away from the swings when we got to the bottom of the hill.

Once her attention was on the horse, I showed her how to pet it and she petted its nose and proclaimed, "Soft nose!" Then it was off to the swings where I told her she had to hold on, which she would do for about 2 minutes and then forget. After about two or three rounds of this, we got back down and stopped by the horse again so she could pet his nose. The horse even tried to nibble her hand which was funny, and then he turned away to eat some grass. Amelia noticed this and said, "Horse eat grass!" and I said, "Yes, that's what a horse eats." She immediately dropped to the ground and I thought she was going to crawl. When she didn't move anywhere I realized ... she was eating the grass! I didn't know whether to gasp or laugh, but I of course told her immediately that no, we don't eat grass - such a mean mommy.

Where do they get these ideas?