Finding Their Voices

Violet has discovered a new word, and is exploring how best to apply it and explore the layers of meaning it can contain. She says, "Uh oh!" in her sweet little baby voice, whenever something hits the floor or is dropped or otherwise goes awry. She has taken to dropping things on purpose, just to be able to say it, which is super funny. Perhaps even funnier, though, is when she lets fly a whole string of "Uh oh uh oh uh oh" when something goes really wrong, like the other day when she pulled a basket off the couch and its contents spilled everywhere. I think my very favorite might be when she says it almost absentmindedly in this tiny quiet voice, like she is talking to herself, when I drop something and she is only half paying attention to me. It's like I can almost see the wheels turning in her head as she is learning about language and cause and effect and all that. I can't believe that a year ago I looked like this and now she is this, this gorgeous, whole, complicated person who obviously has an internal life and a sense of humor and an ever-increasing independence. And yet ANOTHER cold this Thanksgiving weekend, but such is life.

Grace's speech is very grown-up now and so many of her funny mispronunciations have fallen by the wayside. She does still replace the first syllables of many words with the sound ber-, though. For instance, we grew bermatoes* in our garden this year and when something is not real it is bertend and in the mirror you see your berflection and food that is really good is berlicious. Also, she has some weird mental block about correctly pronouncing the word yellow. She can totally make all the sounds that make up the word and if you can trick her into not realizing what word it is she will say it, but she can't somehow get her tongue around it if she is thinking of the color. It comes out as sort of "lellow" usually, with an odd slur on the second l sound. Who knows what wackiness lurks in the minds of adorable preschool children?*

*Speaking of tomatoes, our plants are still going strong; can you believe it? It's practically December! We had a ton of rain this fall and just like magic our tomatoes started producing and growing these lovely, normal-sized fruits. It's like plants need water or something to thrive-- crazy, I know. It's so cool now and we aren't getting as much sun so they aren't ripening as quickly, though, and when they are ripening they aren't getting to that gorgeous summer scarlet, but to a more muted hue. We are now in a race with the first overnight freeze. Will our oodles of green tomatoes make it to red/orange/yellow before we get the first frost? I can hardly bear the anticipation!

*And speaking of adorable preschool children, Grace got her first real haircut last week. I sort of half-heartedly trimmed the sides back in March, but she still had a LOT of uneven baby ends and it was growing out into a weird shape. Her hair has been so slow to grow that I haven't wanted to cut it but I finally decided it would really benefit from a better shape. I went to the guy who just cut my hair the week before because he specializes in curly hair and gave me a great cut, and I consider it a smashing success. Grace stood very still and was very patient but also VERY. SERIOUS.

It turned out really adorable and I am very happy with it, although we basically have the same haircut now, which is a little odd. We're TWINS! Now if only I could somehow have the same skin as her as well as the same hair...