This sweet flower is growing like a weed lately. Long legs, long feet, and lots of new language popping up every single day. She has such a curiously quirky personality- she thrives on inside jokes and made-up songs and recurring silly make-believe games (like reaching into a pretend pocket, pulling out a pretend duck, telling you what color it is, then handing it to you to eat... "Duck? Yeah? Oh... blue. Yum yum".. shoving the duck into your mouth. "Purple. Dada." Pats her pocket... saving the purple duck for Dada because it's his favorite color). At bedtime she is an alligator or a sea lion and I can't shut the door until I throw her a pretend fish to eat (upon catching the fish she lets out a joyous "Hurrah!" before eating it), then we must tell her to have "sweet purple hot dog dreams" (that one has evolved over time to include a few inside jokes).
I want to record more about her language acquisition soon, because it is absolutely fascinating. She uses a combination of real words, made up words (but always the same word for the same meaning, such as "vuh-vuh" for dog), real sign language, her own invented sign language, and motioning/gesturing in context. Recently she has begun to (correctly) use a few new phrases:
"Here you go"
"Me too"
"A couple more"
"Thank you"
Of course my favorite is the "thank you", which she says as "bec-oo", because I have never forced her or even asked her to say it... she just picked it up from every day conversations and now she says it all day long for everything. I get a little swell of happiness every time she says it, my sweet sweet baby lamb. "Bec-oo, Mama." She says it for all sorts of things: when I hand her a pile of clean laundry to fold, when I help her get a snack, when I tell her we're going to the beach or the park. I just love that she says it for little things and big things. Always the same cheerful "bec-oo, Mama", whether I just handed her a stack of bowls to put away or when I told her we were going to have ice cream for dinner.
She's so aware and attentive, thoughtful and deliberate. In life. In general. I love watching her personality unfold; watching her test out tricky little toddler ideas to see if they fit, where they fit, in with her other traits. Today she was jumping off a (low to the ground) chair, saying "1, 2, 1, 2 ... aaand JUMP!" I asked her where she learned that and she said "Daddy-O" (which is what she's been goofily calling Brady lately).
She and I have been having a not-so-easy time on our babysitting days, but luckily today we had a peaceful dinner after the kids left. While we were eating it was raining, which turned into a sun shower, so we scampered outside to look for rainbows. We ended up standing on the corner of the street, directly in the spot where the wall of rain ended. We could take one step to our left and stand in the rain shower, or one step to our right and be completely out of the rain. Looking up the hill we watched a giant, faint rainbow that stretched across the sky in almost a straight line. It was so magical! After it faded away we walked back into the rain towards home.
Millie is SO excited to go visit Grandma and Eve-the-cat in Cape Cod tomorrow! I have quite a few things on my packing list, but Millie insists the only thing we need to bring is apples. While she was in the tub tonight she was remembering the game of catch she played with Teta Annie at the beach last month. She talks about it all the time, but this time she really remembered all the details in order and made a sentence: "Teta, purple-yellow ball (+ tossing motion), beach 'adella' (water)", shakes her head, "haha, nooo Teta!" (meaning "silly Teta"). Maybe Teta can confirm, but I'm pretty sure it was a little football that was half purple and half yellow that they were throwing around.
Hopefully I'll be posting some pictures from the beach very soon!
