Life as a nursing mama provides lots of moments for sitting and listening. At chez-adorable, those listening-moments also provide lots of smiles. Take this afternoon's moment for example:
(Overheard from the mound of pillows in the nursing room bedroom while Dadoo and Averie are playing in the living room)
Averie: Dadoo, look! Look at this! Look at this fuzzy thing! Your leg! It has fur all over it.
Dadoo: Averie, that's hair. I have hair on my legs.
Averie: (puzzled) Why? Why do you have hair on your legs?
Dadoo: Well, that's the way God made me. (brief silence) Does that make sense?
Averie: Way-ul, yes. (Emphatically) But Dadoo, girls don't have that on their legs.
Dadoo: No, Averie. No they don't.
Mama: (Smile)
That's 2 years, 2 months, 18 days, 5 hours and 15 minutes if you're counting annually.
Time flies. Babies grow. The tiniest girl is so grown-up that she doesn't even flinch when it's time for a shot. She stands a full 36 inches in her chucks and is nearly a bit less than a pound per inch (which just for the record is exactly where she should be according to our incredible pediatrician).
Her sentences take on more words each day. A few evenings ago, she walked over to her Dadoo who was searching under the bed for a flip-flop and matter-of-factly asked, 'What're-ya lookin' at, Dadoo?'
Though she's always talked with us and her favorite pals, she's starting to talk more with people she's less familiar with. She loves puzzles and play-dough and reading and listening to 'pretty music'. She knows how to work the photos on Dadoo's ipod, and she can count to ten (though she doesn't like the the smallest squared prime number).
She knows all her ABC's and mouths the words to many songs, though these days the only ones she'll really sing are the ones she makes up herself. She likes to read herself books, and she loves kissing Remy right on the mouth. He licks her back almost every time.
Some people say she looks a lot like Mama. Some days she does. But every day, her eyes are all Dadoo.
There are lots of new words here at Chez Adorable as our tiny toddler finds new ways to express herself and alert us to all that she sees and experiences.
A walk two weeks ago took we-the-family past a small, yappy dog's residence. 'Puppy!' the girl cried as the little, wildly-barking dog ran up to us. 'Chihuahua' said Mama as we continued our walk.
A walk a few days later took us past the same residence with the same little, wildly-barking dog. 'Kih-wah-wah! Kih-wah-wah!' the girl shouted as we continued our walk. 'Bye, bye, kih-wah-wah!' she said. "!!!!" said Mama & Dadoo to each other, speechless as we realized she remembered.
Other words, bigger words, words with more and more syllables are joining her vocabulary. 'Humidifier' is a recent favorite, along with 'negotiable' - as in 'Putting your jacket on before you go outside is non-negotiable'.
The biggest language change, though isn't just the sheer volume of new words the toddler is learning. It's more about the way she uses them. These days there are very few of those baby-type phrases spoken. These days, it's all about a multitude of words, all the ones she knows that are relevent to the current situation, pouring out into as many sentences as she thinks it takes to explain herself to us.
'Mama, Dadoo fix milk for Averie. Dadoo come see us milk.' ... 'Dadoo, one, two, three, four, jump! My turn!' ... 'Come on, Mama! Come on!' ... 'Dadoo! Open. In there. Now!' ... 'No! Other ones! Other ones! Heark ones!' ... 'Mama an' Dadoo, see? Wah-Wah (flower)!' ... 'Hi Wee-ull (Will, our neighbor)!'
And last night, a new line, more evidence that she's got stuff figured out:
Dadoo: (eyes tired, arms covered in spaghetti and cookie crumbs) - "Averie, we don't play with our food. Eat your cookie or I'll take it away. Do you understand?"
Averie: (mouth full of cookie, eyes shining) - Nods head. "Yeah." (In stronger, determined voice) - "No, Dadoo. Dadoo, I take it away. Now." (Cue small hand holding cookie stretching away from Daddo until cookie is out of his reach, meanwhile toddler's eyes gleam.)
Mama: (sits silently, hand over mouth, stunned by the mocking-bird voice of defiance coming from her tiny girl . . . wondering if Dadoo understoond what just happened, then realizing he didn't.)
Dadoo: (suddenly becoming more aware) - "What just happened?"
Mama: "Um . . ."
Averie: "All done. Get down. Now."
Fin
With four exceptions, babymama has always disliked chicken. Unless that chicken was hanging out after being barbequed, fried, stuffed between the halves of an onion roll or prepared as a courting specialty a-la-daddy, it was not, repeat N-O-T, getting anywhere near mama's tummy.
All that changed when baby-cutest came along. After the initial months when babymama only ate a few foods (most of which were fruits), mama experienced a conversion if you will, to the church of chicken, denomination 'Wings, y'all'. Mama could not get enough of them. Grilled, fried, rubbed, barbequed and dipped into some heartburn inducing hotsauce, those wings made their way bite by dripping, delicious bite right into mama's mouth and baby's tummy. (On a side note, this made babydaddy really happy, because he was getting quite tired of eating mexican and BLTs every night).
The best wings of all were (and still are) babydaddy's wings - rubbed with love and spices and grilled to perfection right in our backyard. Babymama still asks for them, and wing-lover that he is, babydaddy is always happy to oblige.
It should come as no surprise, then, that baby-hotsauce still enjoys the wing experience, and while she can't as yet ingest them herself, she loves being as close to those wings as she possibly can. Sometimes that means watching from the window while daddy grills 'em up at home. Other times, like a recent outing to Sticky Fingers, she just wants to be as close as possible to the eater.
Incidentally, baby-sweetheart's blues name is "Fat Liver Parker" . . . but babymama takes the liberty of changing it to "Baby-fat" . . .
**BLOGGER'S NOTE: although this post says June 17th . . . that's only the date babymama tried to post it. It's actually taken 10 days to get a moment to put in the photos, so it's really going online on the 28th.
what's better than a bulldozer and a backhoe? Daddy's arms, of course! Wednesday afternoon, Averie got her first view of some construction (destruction) equipment as the city continued demolishing our front yard.
Neither baby nor babymama are certain that the big yellow digging and smushing things in the yard are actually a bulldozer and a backhoe - they could just as easily be an excavator and some type of grader. Either way, she seemed even smaller than usual next to these giant slabs of steel, and we decided to take a picture.
While the construction of the new sewer line provided a big dose of thunderous, wall-shaking excitement, nothing's better than a hug. The perfect tonic after a full day of brand new adventures? Cuddle time on daddy's chest.
