She sprung out of bed like a rocket, gleefully declaring, "It's picture day!" I don't know exactly why it's so fun to have your picture taken by a stranger, but it is. While I have to resort to trickery and shenanigans to get the kid to make eye contact with a camera, have her stand on the white background at Picture People and she will cheese like a professional model.

As Alexis rushed around to get ready, I wondered if she realized that picture day was at school. When there are dozens of children in need of portraits, it's a lot more like an assembly line and a lot less like the You Are a Super Star! treatment she gets when I take her for pictures. When she asked if she could wear her purple polka-dotted dress, I realized she did know that it was school picture day. That is the dress she wore for pictures in the spring.

As I told her that no, she couldn't wear that dress that she outgrew six months ago, I marveled at how she remembered that detail. I can't remember what I was trying to do five minutes ago. Six months is pretty lost on me. Given that I frequently depend on the kid to remember where I parked at the mall, though, I wasn't entirely surprised.

Then she asked if she could wear her red dress. I pulled out the one we had recently picked out at the store together. "Not that red dress," she told me.

I was confuzzled.

She explained further and I realized she meant the red corduroy dress with matching ballet flats that she hasn't worn in A YEAR. In fact, the last time she wore it was for picture day last fall.

While I told her that dress was also too small, she asked for yet another one. This time it was the pink striped one that she wore for school pictures two springs ago.

Then she did it again. By the time she was done listing potential school picture dresses, she was all the way back to fall 2007. She was ONE YEAR OLD at the time.

My brain exploded at the realization that her Super Power is remembering exactly what she wore for what event. It's not the most useful skill in the world, but if I can manage to harness it just right, it could be fabulous.