boody!

i love the way sparrow pronounces things. she sits on the bed, for example, bounces up and down, and says, "bowncy? bowncy?" then, "mama--bowncy? bowncy?" "hahaha, sparrow i can't bounce with you! i am sooo tired!" she is undeterred. "Daddy--bowncy? bowncy?" she always does it when i am trying to get her to nap, too, so i can nap, and it doesn't help her being so cute because she makes me laugh so hard when she does that that i can't even properly discipline her to come back and fall asleep...

another one of her favorite things is to pat her bottom when she is getting her diaper changed. Thomas actually taught her to say "booty" instead of "bottom," and it kills me because she will twist and say "boody! pawo (sparrow) boody!" then follows the inevitable, "mama boody!" whence she is not satisfied until i, too, have patted my own boody.

i couldn't get what she was saying at first, but we were in the car the other day and she kept saying "toway! toway!" finally i realized she was pointing out the window at the trees. tree! toway! that is a new development! tree for her used to sound just like "wee."

i can't believe all the things she is saying! may-doe! (tomato) twacca (tractor) baby-dah! (baby doll) it is precious. what else... oh yes! she says "neiba--wady!" (neighbor-lady!) can you believe it? when she hears the neighbor lady work on her porch or walk up the stairs! now that's amazing! this morning we were on our way to samuel's house, and we stopped at a red light, when suddenly she cried out, "WED!" what? wed? ...oh, RED! red! she is astounding! she can also point out yellow for sure, but colors are still a bit mixed.

since her hair has gotten to an unfortunate mullet-like stage, i try to put her hair in pigtails every day. when we do her hair, we tell her to lie still, then take the brush and start working on it, counting. recently she has been finding the little rubber bands or her hair brush and attempting the process herself, counting faithfully along. she can definitely count to four, i don't know about any further.

we have taught her to drink out of a glass, a thick little blue flower-pot-shaped glass without a lid. i wanted her to become independent of sippy cups at an early age for several reasons: the plastic chemical contamination, also the impossibility of clearing sippy-cup crevices of mold, and also because i plain didn't want her to still be dependent on a sippy cup when she was seven. the sooner she learns to handle a glass and not to spill it, the better. she is simply addicted to (rice) milk. she cries for "maauk!" loudly several times a day, and devours it, with her cute little hands cupping the glass, one pinky sticking out. if she spills, i give her a towel and she has to wipe the spill. if she starts playing with the milk, i take it away.

the other day it came quite in handy because we were at the co-op and they had out samples of hazelnut milk. sparrow is always a challenge a the co-op because she doesn't sit happily in the cart for long, and jumps out on me, and then to let her down amongst all those bulk bins that she so desperately wants to dig her fingers into becomes quite the hawking experience for me. anyways, thank God for almond milk samples, because it kept her happy for another 15 seconds while i was trying to pay and get outta there, and she could drink it all by herself, straight out of the sample cup. i don't have to take an extra cup for her everywhere we go.

however, when her sample was gone, she loudly cried out for more milk. i wasn't going to just keep feeding her the co-ops milk samples! we were about to go to trader joe's so i told her she could have more milk there. she threw a bit of a fit, i'm afraid. still haven't quite figured out how to command immediate and unprotesting obedience in the store! she wailed and wailed and cried for milk almost all the way to trader joe's. at first i kept telling her she was going to get more. then i told her to stop whining, and subsequently ignored her. she got a lot more cheerful toward the end. once in tj's, i got a little sample cup and then opened a box of rice milk and she devoured almost 3 cups of it while we were shopping! but what a convenient thing it is to have her be able to drink it like that in a shopping cart!

sparrow does a million cute things, like say "okay!" and "alright!" and "whoa," and she keeps asking us to pray over and over again, throughout our dinner time. she stretches out both her hands to us and says, "pway? pway?" in the middle of church on sunday, jacob was teaching, and sparrow suddenly said "jay-bup!...jay-cub!" i couldn't believe she just pulled his name out of her memory like that! she has a thing for names. she knows all the lomelinos, and the other day we were playing in the reeves' yard (they weren't even there), and suddenly she said, "asha!" asher!? i thought she only paid attention to goldie! she also repeats "dowis!" if she hears anyone say my name.

she sits in a tiny blue chair at a coffee table in the kitchen. every time i give her toast or crackers to eat there, she settles in, then pulls out another little gray chair next to her and says, "mama?--mama?" wanting me to come sit with her. LOVE that!