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Thursday, December 30, 2004.
From the Papa Journal:
M- is into calendars all of a sudden. It has probably been a growing interest since preschool began and there was ongoing talk of schedules and Monday is a school day but Tuesday is not. Now her mom has given her a 2004 calendar to play with and she is very happy to write her squiggle marks on it, planning all sorts of upcoming events. (I am happy to see she is still using the same basic character in her writing. It looks like an n but it has no straight line jotting out, just the curve, the upside down u. )
When we climb up on her bed for story time she has decided that her book shaped like a leopard is now a calendar. Instead of my reading the story to her she wants to present the week's schedule to me. "How 'bout on this day we play?"
M- is big on presenting books these days. The other day I discovered that she could pretend to read all of this Barney's Opposites book that somehow washed ashore in our house. When I read it to her I leave out the Barney because it's on every friggin' page and I might as well be saying, "Tall...Buy Barney! Short...Buy Barney!" So when M- "reads" the book she says, "He is tall. He is short." She chose to perform her reading trick as a kind of intermission show during a family charades game for Christmas.
The other show she produced this holiday season involved a very lovely pop-up book of Peter and the Wolf. She sets it up like a stage set for the audience and narrates. Flips a page. Then narrates. And so on. She has very little to say overall and the story sort of trips along from page to page without much connection. It changes each time and often ends a page or two shy of the wolf getting stuck in the zoo. Also, sometimes the duck gets it, sometimes the duck gets away. Kind of keeps the story exciting actually.
There is also a show in pre-production. This is the old woman who swallowed the fly story. Various animals are swallowed to get other ones, always in different order and with different wriggles and wiggles inside them. How absurd to swallow a bird. I'll let you know how it turns out.
Thursday, July 22, 2004. We went out for fried chicken at the Southern Cafe. Interesting thing to do my first night back from the South (New Orleans). We went out with M's aunt and uncle. When we got back we were in her room when she announced, "That was fun with Annie and Tio."
Yesterday, also with no prompting other than listening to a phone message by her grandmother, she said, "Hey, that's Noni!" Then, putting her face inches from mine, "Noni is your mama." And, to finish it off, "I love your mama."
Over the last few weeks, Where the Wild Things Are and Is Your Mama a Llama? were topping the charts here. Funny how what that really means is that Amy and I were making sure that she chose those ones. Though, she does seem to seek them out.
When you hear someone talking about their kid's favorite book. I think the real scenario may be more like this. "Oh you want to read tha...Wait, I remember this! this is a grea...Yeah, let's read this one. What? You meant the other one? That's just a stupid bunny book. Let's read this one. OK, let's read three books then but we're gonna read this one, OK? Ok."
The next day: "Oh yes, she just ADORES The Lorax. She requests it all the time. Funny how they just CONNECT with certain books."
Tuesday, July 13, 2004. Today we bought the girl her first sleeping bag. It appears to have been finely crafted w/o bathroom breaks in a sweatshop somewhere in the third world. We feel this will help her learn about Nature and the way things are. The cute thing was she insisted on taking her nap in her sleeping bag up on her bed.
From the Papa Journal. 7/12/04. Today the girl burped and said, "Who dat?" What she means by who that, generally, is what's that? In this case, the translation probably was, "Um, excuse me, but what's that word again for when you make that sound?"
July 10, 2004. When I put the girl down for a nap, these days, she often thinks it's funny to say "OK bye bye" and to wave as I leave the room. Today she added to the mix, "Thank you very much!"
6/18/04. Tonight I had the girl in tears of laughter as I retold her her birth story. Well, the part that cracks her up is when I tell her about how she started nursing right away and then start pooping and peeing right away. She especially appreciates the sound effects.
Hey, look, I was there on the front lines. I changed those 12 diapers a day. I heard those sounds. I lived it, man.
One moment you're doing the diaper dance, the next you're telling them stories that make them wet their pants. It's all just a slice of chance.
6/16/04. Alas, complete, accurate sentences are quickly devouring cutes words and phrases as our little girl propells herself towards her third ring around the rosey. We cling to lingering slip-ups.
One current favorite concerns getting dressed. While she now often insists on picking out the outfit and putting it on (this often involves scaling the changing table and picking something off a higher shelf), she still has trouble getting her pants up over her diaper butt. She used to start making upset, frustrated noises about this but now she invariably says, "Help a little bit?"
If you hear this phrase at any time in our home, you can count down the seconds until you will see a girl standing there with her pants halfway up her legs and a diaper butt sticking into the air.
Meanwhile, she is out of control on this phone chatter business. Her latest routine with her yellow plastic phone involves this simulated flirtatious or hysterical laughter and either "Oh my god!" or "Oh my gosh!" The teen years come earlier than expected.
Friday, June 11, 2004
It is her last day on this earth, as far as I know, as the sole possessor of her parents' attention. She plays in the sandbox, thinking, I'll have a fine time here and then I'll return home where I don't have to share with this fun but, let's face it, bit freaky friend I have over here.
I watch her thinking today at 5 a.m. you gained a little brother and today at 5 p.m. you'll find that out and the moment you lay eyes on that little baby the next major chapter of your life begins. Not bad or good, just next.
When I was a boy, well a young man, I looked at such things and thought everything dies. Your elementary school life dies, your jr. high life dies, and so on. Friendships dies. Eventually, (if you're lucky) when you're older, people die. But then you're born into a new world. You have a new chance to be what you want to be.
Now I look on it more that everything pools up and reflects and then rushes on. Life is not about dying, life is about flow and reflection. It is about ripples and still, about eggs and eating, about journeys and rituals.
These babies grow up and everything is theirs. They are showered in attention. They are given whatever they request. Then, one day, most or many of them watch in astonishment as a new person joins their family. Like an amoeba watching in shock as one blob joins another blob and makes a bigger blob. Who is that guy hanging off of mama's whatsit?
You've got to switch a light off to realize it has been on, and then back on to remember it was off. The spotlight only lingers for a spell. The fortunate ones learn to turn their love of love back into love. Ya gotta give to receive, yo, in spite of what they taught you those first two years.
She holds up the plastic bowl to the play kitchen. She presses the red button. Water drips out on to a thousand grains of sand
6/7/04.
Last night I couldn't sleep. I kept hearing voices outside the window, in the wind, through the walls. I moved around to various rooms like a pregnant man, but I still felt a little uneasy.
This morning the wind had thrown open our basement door and blown out the pilot light on the water heater. I woke an hour later then I'd planned, took a cold shower and headed off to school. It was my last Monday of school until September (well, except for the three weeks of Young Writers Camp I'm going to do very soon).
This afternoon I tried to light the pilot, but I could hear no gas when I depressed the pilot button and held out a match. Meanwhile, upstairs, through the living room floor, my daughter was calling, "Hi Papa! Hi Papa! Hi Papa!" as I'd told her she couldn't come down to the basement with me but she could talk to me through the floor. The pilot wouldn't light. The water wouldn't heat. No bath for the girl.
She understood and was happy reading her choochoo pop-up book that her noni gave her. "I love this book," she told me. Her sentences are getting totally out of hand. Later she said, "It's hard to walk in pijamas."
It used to be we did backflips when she
6/5/04. I'm coming up the stairs with the girl after a decent bike ride. I'm tired. I bring up my bike. I bring up the burley trailer. The girl is eating an apple and taking it one step at a time. I follow her, urging her on. I'm ready to lie on the couch with a cold drink. She stops to consider the flowers, takes another bite of her apple. It's hot. I'm sweaty. Suddenly I hear a song drifiting down from our front door. It's Carole King. She sings, "Sometimes I wonder if I'm ever going to make it home again..."
6/3/04. I'm looking out the window of her bedroom at a bird on the sprinkler. "Look at the birdie," I say. "A birdie?" she says, clambering up to see. It flies up on the hammock post. She looks at it. "It's look for some food," she says. I tingle with pride. "What kind of food?" I ask. "Burgers," she says. Even prouder.
May 23, 2004. An old friend of mine got married this weekend. There had been talk when the invitations went out saying no children allowed at the ceremony. Gasp, but his brother just had a baby. Gasp, what can this mean? Should I just fly down? Should we protest?
When a babysitting auntie happily stepped forward, I realized this wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Amy and I at a wedding and both of us were going to get to remain seated for the entire ceremony? We would be able to eat calmly, drink extravagantly, talk to people at our leisure?
The night before we were to fly down, our daughter began to cough. She ran a fever. She threw up. By morning we were grounded and our night on the town had flown the coup (or possibly the croupe). We stayed home with our little charge and a lovely family weekend (no plans as we weren't supposed to be home!!!).
I am sad to have missed this special occasion for my old friend. I am sad that a certain grandmother and a certain auntie didn't get to spend time with their little pal. However, it was out of my hands. They made their choice when they sent out those invitations.
Blame it on the Wrath of the Uninvited Child.
Saturday, April 10, 2004. Today Maya decided to put on her diaper herself, which she succeeded in doing, though I had to help her make it tight enough. After that I gave her a shirt and pants and said do you want to do it. She nodded, "Maya do it." I peeked in the room later and she had the shirt on, though inside out. I congratulated her and asked if she wanted help with the pants. "Maya do it." I came back later and she was standing on the opening of the pants, leaning against a bookshelf, trying to get a toe in the pant tunnel. I came back still later and she had the pants on, unbuttoned. Amazing! Maya do it!
Thursday, April 8, 2004.
The evidence is not overwhelming that my first forray into the world of Learning (not Teaching) as a Papa and a Teacher has been a staggering success. The staggering part you can keep, as well as overwhelming, but I'm not sure about the rest.
Consider:
This class I'm taking is called Reading as a Writer and Writing as a Reader. Let's start with the reading. I am a reader. I love reading. I stay up late reading (don't I?). Out of the four novels we have read for class, I have finished exactly zero of them in time for class. The only assignment I handled so far was reading one short story by Hemmingway and one short story by Virginia Woolf.
Consider:
This week I read most of a wonderful book of short stories called Interpreter of Maladies, but didn't finish. All the while I was thinking vaguely that we should have been reading something by the author, Peter Orner, who was going to visit for the next class (tonight). This afternoon I realized WE WERE supposed to be reading something by Orner, NOT Interpreter of Maladies. That's next week's reading!
Consider:
I rushed home and closed the door to my beautiful family to dutifully crank out a page of writing to turn in for my weekly writing assignment, only to remember upon reaching class that we no longer turn in a page as we are supposed to be finishing up our manuscripts of 5-15 pages.
Consider:
For homework this week I read my classmates' manuscripts one time each and scribbled few if any comments, thinking that I would still have the opportunity to hear the story read aloud in the next class and make a much deeper analysis / provide much better feedback. This is because I missed the class two weeks ago where presumably workshops were discussed. So I got to class tonight and she says, OK, what do you think of So-and-so's story with nobody reading it aloud to poor little me and I spent the night tonight listening to other people comments and getting just about to the point where I could formulate a comment when it was time to move on to the next manuscript.
Consider:
I really began to lose it when a classmate asked me if I was turning in my story next week or the follow and I replied that it was my understanding that I was not being workshopped actually for three weeks. We checked the syllabus and it said final day, class party, with no mention of workhops on that day.
Be it resolved that I have lost my mind. I spend the next hour of class considering ways to make a break for it. The door is too far from where I'm sitting and the window wouldn't work unless I timed it to land in a mail truck (hollering, "I'm gonna write myself a letter / I'm gonna daub myself with glue..." as they hauled me off, one way or the other).
But then I talk to my teacher and it turns out I AM going the last day and I'm NOT NECESSARILY crazy. And then after class, while strolling past the Berkeley revamped glorious library, I decide on the proper scene for starting my story with action and drama. Then I get a nice plate of Vietnamese grilled pork and steamed rice with peanut and fish sauce and an icy cold Tsing-tao and I sit and sip and slurp and scribble down a series of scenes for my story with tension and release and tension and release and it looks like a mountain range and maybe everything will just somehow work out by the end of class. Or not. But I'm still a knucklehead papa teacher student guy who is barely keeping all his balls in the air (and it's not easy to keep your balls in the air, believe me, unless you're playing pocket pinball with Neil Armstrong).
Wednesday, March 31, 2004. If you don't have children and you want to know something about the two year-old mindset, you just have to think back to the Soup Nazi on Seinfeld. Look to the left, move to the right, don't make eye-contact...
Tonight Maya and I were sitting down to eat a super burrito and I cut off the bottom of my burrito and then broke that in half pieces and gave them to her in a bowl. We had been discussing the whole way home how we were going to chomp chomp our burrito. Maya grabbed the offending bowl and dumped the burrito out on the table and began to cry. What? I asked. She pointed at my burrito and began babbling incoherently (so what else is new?).
What? She kept pointing at my burrito and by now tears were streaming down her cheeks, snot bubbles began to take lift-off from that ever popular snot bubble recreation spot Nostrils Point. (Dude! Gnarly updraft!).
I was thinking vaguely that I had somehow disturbed the integrity of the burrito for her, not by sawing off the bottom of the burrito, but by breaking that bottom in half, as if disturbing its geometry, breaking its circumference.
I was thinking maybe she had alread grasped the nature of a burrito and she knew the point was to hold it intact in your hands and launch your best great white shark eyes rolling back chomp, hoping for an explosion of crema, guaca, beans, rice and tortilla all in one.
I played it off like I didn't get it,though. Maya, I said. It's just a burrito. She howled and pointed. I scooped her up and we walked around the table. The phone rang and we listened to the outgoing and incoming message. We laughed. We returned to the table and I told her Maya went cuckoo for a burrito. She laughed and said Maya cuckoo. Then she pretended to cry and laughed again.
We finished our burrito in relative peace and tranquility, Maya's sense of humor perhaps taking on a new fold, but her intuitive sense of the third dimension shamefully diminished.
Monday, March 29, 2004. They said it couldn't be done, but here I am blogging in the backyard whilst taking care of two toddlers. You may say that I am documenting my own neglect. Perhaps, but maybe that's the price you pay to be a digital journalist on the frontlines of parenting. I shall call the two girls M1 and M2, M1 being my own and M2 not my own.
M1 leaves the sandbox, distracted by my laptop. After I scrape her off my chair and tell her to go back to her natural habitat (I have wrecked the purity of the experiment already with the discovery of my presence), she picks up her yellow plastic phone and begans a roaming conversation, up past the newly planted vegetables, across the lawn and back down to the patio where we sit, talking in mostly nonsense all the while.
M2, meanwhile, puts her little red bucket up in the play kit hen and presses the red button to get some water into it. S/he pours this into a yellow plastic cup, which she purs back into the red bucket, holding up the yellow cup to examine it. Now she pours the yellow back to the red and then (I can hardly keep up) red to yellow, yellow to another yellow, and then back to tohe red button to fill the red bucket. Phew.
M1 is back in the sandbox to fill a yellow cup full of sand, which she now brings out to the little round table, sitting down on a bench behind her (red plastic), to stir the sand in her cup with a white spoon.
M2 comes over to join her, bringing a black plastic dog. She pours yellow into green and staresa athte black plastic dog which M1 has now confiscated with a prim, "no!" and is spooning sand over from her yellow cup. The water from teh green has now been mixed with sand from yellow to make a little mud on the black plastic dog, but this is now being scraped off (you really can't keep up, even with flying fingers).
Meanwhile M2 has refileld the red buc ked with what water or sand, and is sitting down on a red plastic bench at the gray plastic table with the black plastic dog which she has reacquiredd as well as a green plastic cup.
M1 runs over with a handful of sand and pours it into M2's red bucket of water, making some mud which M2 brings over to M1's table and offers to dump on her yellow cup of sand or mud, not sure.
(At this point our ever vigilant narrator has had to intervene with a few stern reminders of right and wrong...uh oh, gotta run!)
3/22/04. There is a pretty plum tree in our back yard that blooms on Amy's birthday every year. Brilliant white flowers flutter down from its shady canopy. I must have pointed this tree out to Maya this year and said something about it being caused by Amy. Now, whenever we pass a tree in bloom, she holds out her little arm and points, "Mama did that."
3/10/04. Maya is really into Madeline. She has memorized one of her first sentences. When I get to "Suddenly, Mrs. Clavel turn on the light and said..." she wags her finger and says, "Something is not right!"
Her use of phrases is really starting to blow us away. We were trying to fix something the other night and she casually asked, "Not working?" Then she'll go back to complete babble for days on end, as if nervous she's given herself away.
Meanwhile, in case I haven't logged this yet. Let the records show that at this age, when we pass Sequoia, Maya points and says, "Papa's Cool!" but of course meaning "Papa's School!"
2/18/04. Maya is presented with the options of reading with me, her papa, or reading with her mama. "There you go, Papa," she quickly announces, pointing me out the door. I stand up and she walks out to the next door, pointing out that as well. "There you go, Papa," she repeats. I stop and ask for a kiss goodnight. Tiny lips on my cheek. I turn to watch her go but she's already closed the door behind me.
2/15/04. Maya wanders out into the living room in her standard morning uniform: pajamas and big hair. She turns to her baby stroller. It is pink and made out of the cheapest materials you can imagine. In fact, the first one her grandma bought her, in a Davis store, ripped ten feet from the door and was replaced for free.
She turns to her stroller and spots her big, red microphone. "Hey!" she says. "Monkey phone!" She's big on hey! these days. "Hey! Kitty-cats!" Or, "Hey! Maya bike!"
We head out the front door to get the newspapers. I stop a few steps down and say, "Oops, we left the door open." Maya here's oops and does her version of oopsadaisy: "Apple daisies!"
2/6/04. Language Observations. I tried to use the microwave and the dryer the other day. A no-no with our circuitry. Pow! The lights went out. Maya looked up and said, "Light turn off." I stared at her in shock, until I could find the words to say, "You can speak!"
It is dawning on me that this girl is doing some serious stringing together of words and ideas. Grammar is taking hold in her brain, or maybe it long since has but now she can voice it. I need to do some studying up, obviously. I just don't want to fall into using developmental jargon and seeing things as merely the next installment of yourbaby.com, rather than joyful moments of discovery.
The other day she stood in the doorway trying to get me to go to her room. She raised her arm and said "Room?" in that wonderfully inquisitive way she does. Room? I was sitting, staring at her with reluctance as it was after work and I was resting on the floor. She gave me a little smile and her wiggled her fingers in a mini beckon and then she said, "C'mon!" She knows c'mon?! C'mon!
While I am excited about her verbal gymnastics, I must admit I am also a little terrified. Will I wake one day and spend the next 12 hours negotiating ice-cream scoops and ear piercings and movie content with a little self-confident power monger? C'mon!
2/5/04 We're sitting there with the grandparents, talking. Maya walks over to the CD's and pulls out the Mandela soundtrack. Her aunt Annie puts it back. We talk some more. We settle into the enormously comfortable couches. Maya walks over and pulls out the Mandela sountrack. Her aunt Annie puts it on.
Dance party ensues. Maya with grandma, "Nona." Maya with Annie. They sway, they jitterbug, they play the drum, play the floor, play their bellies (at Maya's leadership).
They keep dancing. Finally Maya is the only one standing. She does a little dance (my favorite), where she does a few very serious swaying moves and then runs careening to my arms. Then back for moves. Then back for hugs. Moves. Hugs.
Now she sits on my lap watching me type this. Her mama is chatting with doulas in the other room. Time for bed.
1/20/04 Maya plays this game. You probably know it. It is generally known as peekaboo. She hides somewhere, maybe under the table, and then you are to say, "Maya, where aaaaare you?" Then she pops out her face and laughs hysterically.
After a while, she would call out the "Where are you?" just to get things rolling.
Well, somewhere along the way, she's gotten her verbal wires crossed. Now she thinks it is "How are you?" The other night, she ran to hide in her room while Amy and I were at the dinner table. Then, a distant voice floated our way. "Mama. Papa. How arrrrrre you?"
Amy has begun correcting her, but I'm doing everything I can to undermine it. I life would be a whole lot more interesting if people hid behind things as you walked by and then playfully called out, How Arrrrrre You? You'd be at a fine restaurant, waiting to order, when finally the waiter would giggle from under the table, waiting for you to utter the magic words of search and concern.
1/14/04 Whenever Amy is out somewhere, Maya and I will often dash off for a favorite burrito or pizza at Arizmendi (oh man). On such a night, recently, I staggered back up the stairs to our hourse, clutching pizza, baby and a freshly arrived batch of mail. Maya was interested in the mail as she had been getting birthday cards. I dumped the mail and pizza on the table, sat Maya in her "buckle" seat, and took a quick look. No birthday cards, so instead I grabbed the thickest letter, which felt to be a brochure of something, tore it open and handed it to Maya. "Look, Maya, a book for you!"
As Maya began to investigate, I disappeared into the kitchen and returned with our plates and drinks. We sat and happily ate pizza and I finally got to read the morning paper while Maya flipped through her new "book." She began to read it aloud to me, "Koya kaya, yah yah, koyah spshh aiiiee" between bites of her pizza, and all was well in the world. Was a charming little girl, I thought. Here she was laughing, gesturing, and reading aloud some more. All with some dumb little advertisement.
When I heard the word "boobies" I knew something was up. For the first time, I took a good look at the brochure before my daughter. It was the Good Vibrations, Pirate Catalogue. On one page, Maya had a fine selection of pirate porno videos. On the other page were an assortment of vibrators and dildoes. The bulk of Maya's narrative seemed to be derived from a naked pirate gal (man am I going to get googled for that one) and in particular her "boobies." Maya, an avid breastfeeder, was, to put it in piratease, "hooked."
1/4/04 The age of No!!! is upon us. Maya will turn two in two days and I have been convinced that she would not fall trap to the so-called Terrible Two's. I was wrong. Although, it's not that she has suddenly become terrible. It is more that she is on a rollercoaster, dipping down into terrible valleys, rising to adorable peaks, dropping, climbing.
If you had a roommate like her in college, you would be afraid. Sweet, creative, a laugh riot one minute, you might then ask her for your pen back (as she prepares to write on the walls), and send her into a wild fury, perhaps throwing herself on the ground, or against the bed, or just standing there, staring at you, her lip dropped to her knees, and all the oxygen being sucked out of the room as she prepares the loudest wail you've ever heard.
You might find it strange when your college roommate came to you with her hat and asked you to put it on, then demanded that you tie it on, then demanded that you take it off, on, off, on...
If my daughter were your college roommate, you might think it very nutty how she would suddenly rip off her pajamas, stash her diaper (never mind that she was wearing a diaper) in some corner and start running in circles around the nearest table, uttering variations on the word no: first sound only, n- n- n- n-, then nope nope nope then a loud NO (my nephew was famous in our family for his invention of "NOkay".)
Perhaps people would flock to see this wild girl on campus, as she counted, "One, two, four, six, seven, ten!", as she sang "Rock a baby in the tree top," as she took the milk from her cereal and carefully sculpted her hair. Perhaps she would have a following.
12/12/03 Amy walked down to the car this morning with Maya in her arms. Maya pointed at the old beat-up Honda with its patch of bondo and dent in the door and said, "Papa vroom vroom." Amy walked past it to the inherited silver Volvo with broken antenna and exposed fusebox and said, "No, Mama's vroom vroom."
Maya looked puzzled. 'Why doesn't she get it?' Her arm shot out back towards the dirty Honda. "Papa vroom vroom!"
Amy looked, briefly considered it, and then gave herself a pep talk. 'Who's in charge here?' She turned back to the squirming daughter figure and insisted, "Mama's vroom vroom." Maya shook her head and resisted as Amy struggled to get her into the carseat of the volvo. Amy drove off to squeals of "Papa vrooooom vroooom!"
It was only as Amy hit cruising speed on the freeway that she checked the dashboard: the volvo was on empty. She turned to Maya, sitting quietly now in her carseat. Maya held out her arms and tilted her head. "Papa vroom vroom."
12/10/03 I can't believe how far we've come. Early on, I measured my days by what number diaper I, or rather she, was on. My watch might as well have had a stack of diapers and a little red level moving up towards the top. I bowed down to the diaper service man and the good garbage people who took it all away each week.
Now, today, as she speeds towards her 2 year old birthday in January, she has climbed upon the toilet and made doo while the sun...well, while the rain falls. She's a big girl pooper! Ring the bells. Find Nemo. All drains lead to the ocean. My little girl has sent her poop out to the San Francisco Bay! Open your golden gate, Daddy-O, there's a poopmarine headed out to sea.
11/17/03. The other day I decided to get serious about this gutiar stuff. I have been playing for Maya since she has been living above water and very rarely do I get any respect. She is interested in the guitar, but often will either wander off to another activity, or will insist on playing it herself. Mainly, the songs just don't seem to do it for her, or perhaps my voice.
I decided to play hardball: marketing. I began playing the same song for her, over and over and over. I also knew there would be some buy-in with this one because of her recent obsession with Curious George. The song is called Monkey Bite.
Last week, I had my crowning moment. Maya was in the other room with Amy as I sat down on the couch to goof around with the guitar. Suddenly she appeared by my side. "Monkey Bite?" she asked. Pride hit me like a freight and I played for all I was worth.
That moment was soon replaced by another moment, when I tried to play another song. I realized I may have oversaturated the market when Maya stood there and began demanding, mid-song, "Monkey! Monkey! Monkey!"
11/2/03. Today I taught Maya to shake hands with the people in the room, say goodbye and then walk into a closed door and say "Ow." Sometimes this is followed by a dramatic stumble and fall. For her own protection, she has improvised a technique for walking into the door with her belly stuck out. She was so caught up in this activity tonight that she occasionally called me "Mama" and Amy "Papa" as she franticaly shook hands and bellied off to the door. Nevertheless, I am a very proud papa.
Also, this week I noticed Maya standing in a strange pose when she was up on her changing table, getting new clothes. She would hold one hand in front of her, palm towards her chest, hand half closed as if clutching a bouquet of flowers, and she would tilt her head to the side and smile. Looking on the wall, I realized she was imitating the postcard of Maya Angelou that she has been staring at for the last 22 months.
We'll have
Posted by Evan Nichols on 8/14/05; 10:39:49 PM
from the The Papa Journal dept.
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