sounds like butterball!

lots of little new stories to recount for the record of sparrow's little diary.

thomas went out of town for the weekend and we were desolated without him! he took the car and we felt a bit odd stuck in the house saturday morning, so i decided to take sparrow on "adventures" and ride the bus into IV. i would have liked to go even further (peets comes to mind), but it is always a push to get out the door in time and then be back for the nap... besides, we were just learning how to ride the bus and where to catch it and when--we nearly missed our first opportunity, and they only come once every hour! i wanted to go to the co-op for some tidbits, and so we alighted at ucsb and i had brought the little stroller to make a nice morning of it. i had to stop and get a coffee at a place swarming with flies, where the staff took no pains to be in a hurry to serve you, and the coffee tasted burnt, but not too bad once you added some steamed soy. i was tired enough, that is, that i was content with whatever was available. still a little luxury. anyways, we stopped at a playground on our way back to the stop, and i gave sparrow dried fruits that we had purchased. then i realized the bus was coming in a few minutes, and we ran and ran, but missed it by about one minute! so we found a little spot a ways away to play for the next hour. i read a paper while sparrow splashed in puddles. it got a little crazy when she started licking the puddle water off her hands like she does at home in the sink. finally the next bus arrived. i had us all set: sparrow in the stroller, all the groceries underneath, the diaper bag over my shoulder, and the money in my hand. i pushed up to roll the stroller onto the bus, when the big white bus driver said loudly "UH-UH-NO-NO-NO-nonono, you have to clap that thing together." i gave him a pissed/exasperated face despite my well-knowing that i should just be cheerful and compliant, and cried, "i have a bunch of bags in here--how am i supposed to carry it all!" (and keep sparrow under control and with me the whole time) i wanted to say--what if you have someone in a wheelchair come in here--do you make THEM clap their wheels together? the other busdriver hadn't been so cruel! oh but then again--he was mexican. the mean busdriver obviously had never had a child. (whereas mexican men are well-known to give birth all the time.) anyways it was great getting home and later i borrowed ander's car to go to trader joe's, and then aya came over to keep us company and make delicious thai food. in fact, i quite neglected aya in the kitchen for the good part of an hour, because sparrow and i went out searching for lime leaves for the soup, since she said the asian market had been out of them. i could have sworn there was a lime tree nearby... i ended up rushing around the darkening neighborhood for close to 40 minutes with everything yielding nothing but lemons and oranges. when i got back to the house with many exasperated apologies, i found a lime in our fruit basket, leaves still attached, that thomas had picked the other day.

sparrow stayed up late and played with alan and melissa for quite some time and kept saying "aya!" what a fun one to say. aya and i stayed up til... 3? i don't even know, because i told her i didn't want to know the time, when we finally retired, but now... now i want to know the time.

the next morning sparrow ran to the office door and knocked and said "dada!" when we woke up. sigh! she missed him! we filled up our day again with walks and playgrounds and songs. what an emptiness it is without the husband around to laugh with and make dinner for though! sparrow barely took a nap which made me so sad following my late late night that i had to make a second cup of coffee in the afternoon. getting tired and grumpy by dinnertime, i had just sat down to eat, sparrow next to me, and taken a big huge bite. suddenly i tuned in to sparrow, who was saying, "bay! bay! bay!" i am thinking--what is she---oh my gosh, she is saying "pray!" i forgot to pray outloud for my dinner! so i chewed and chewed, telling her, ok, we will pray, hang on, and finally swallowed my bite and we folded our hands and prayed. when i was done, i said the usual, "in jesus' name..." and waited for her to finish, but she did not say amen. oh well, i said it myself and was about to resume eating, when she started up again: "bay! bay! bay!" what!? she really wanted to pray some more! she was holding her hands out to me to grasp them! so i grasped them and we prayed some more, and following this prayer, the same thing happened again! by that time i told her we'd pray some more before bedtime and continued eating in astonishment that i had been spiritually put to shame by a one-year-old.

this morning, thomas was back, and i asked sparrow, "guess who came back to see you?" she says, "sisi? ander?" "nooo, daddy!" i say. first thing she does is look around in the bed to see if he is there. not there! already in the office! then she says wistfully, "daddy--rough" and rubs her cheek. he's been showing her his rough cheeks lately, compared to her smooth ones.

i have also noticed that she can sing 'the wheels on the bus' quite well, after only 2 times of hearing it from me! she sings "ound and ound" with almost the right tune, and tries to cram all the verses into one: "waa!--shh--down!"

the other day she said "vegetables" for the 1st time-- she eats them every night, and she was pretty excited about it, and repeated it when i told her they were almost ready. it sounded just like "butterball!" i was so delighted.

i have been calling nursing "nu-nus" forever, i think reece's son christian started it, and it stuck with me. so whenever i try to get her to focus on or get ready for nursing, i say, "nu-nu time!" she has been saying it, too, but it used to sound like "nu-nu mime." now she can say it perfectly, and the other day i was trying to get her to come with me to the stroller and home, from the playground. she was chasing a flock of crows around a field and kept pursuing them at full running speed. i hollered, "come on, sparrow," and she began running around even faster, with all her might, yelling, "NU-NU TIME!"

i've been teaching her recently, "what's daddy's name? tom-tom!" this morning, i asked her, and she said, "papum!" what a great nickname it will make!

i unfortunately taught her to lick. she now randomly tries to lick my face and it gets really funny--licking wars with a baby. what have i done? she never ceases to be amused by it!