Skip to main content

Willow makes friends ... and words

Willow's vocabulary and friend-making skills took big leaps forward this week.
At the zoo on Wednesday when Willow and I hopped in the newly renovated tot mat, she quickly became friends with a toddler boy and girl. Soon they were off an running, zipping back and forth from side to side, plopping their heads in synchronization onto the padded seats on each side.
The trio giggled and giggled and ran and fell and got back up and ran and plopped and giggled. I had fun just watching.
The toddler girl could talk pretty well, and I think that inspired Willow to talk a little more than she usually does. Of course, most of Willow's talking is gibberish, but sometimes she blurts out a recognizable word or two.
Once when she was trying to get up on to the padded seating, she said (I swear to it), "I wan up!" She hasn't said that phrase since then, but she's said, "Up!" several times.
Since that visit to the zoo, she's also uttered such words as:
Ow-weh ... gah-der (alligator).
Opper (otter).
Birw-dwe (birdie).
Buh-dehr ... fwry (butterfly).
El-fan ... (elephant).
Arh-arh ... (dog, as in arf, arf!).
Gwraz ... (grass).
Now I don't know if you objective folks out there would hear any of those words as clearly as I do, but I can tell you something without objection ...
They're music to my ears.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Adding a splash to the winter gray

Willow, Mommy and I went to the Y's pool on Sunday to take advantage of our membership and to do something summery in this dreary and cold weather. We had so much fun swimming and splashing, Willow and I went back on Tuesday. On Sunday, surprisingly, nobody else was at the pool, and the lifeguard seemed resigned to having to sit boringly in her stand. I have no problem with having an entire pool and a lifeguard all to myself, but, again, I was surprised nobody else was there, except for a few exercisers coming and going to use the steam room and the sauna (and a couple of guys hopped in the whirlpool for a few minutes). When Willow and I went on Tuesday, several people were in the pool, but they quickly scattered when the tot and I entered the pool. Maybe their time in the pool had come to a planned end. Maybe they didn't want to be in the water with someone who might pee or poop at any moment. After the initial scattering a couple of men came into the pool area and swam qui...

Among chaos, peace

I want to show you two pictures, but a little later. First I want to introduce you to chaos (or at least what I consider to be chaos) via a handy, dandy list: I am sitting at a laptop, pounding out a blog's letters as quickly as I can think of them. The laptop is only three months old, yet some of the keys stick sometimes. These sticky keys are the ghostly reminders that a toddler's sticky fingers have been pounding on them. Four loads of laundry lie in various states of "unfinish." One load is wet. One load is wrinkling. Two loads await their spins. A fifth load already has been tucked away in drawers, cabinets and closets (then untucked by a toddler then tucked again by me). Cups, plates and bowls hang for dear life to a hastily stacked pile of dirty dishes in the sink while a clean set of dishes sits in the dishwasher. A pile of pictures and postcards blanket the floor beside the desk in the guest room. This was the work of the sticky fingers that pounded on...

Summer zips on by

I guess it's official. This morning, we witnessed the kiddos hopping on school buses and heading to school. That marks the end of summer, I suppose, and the end of summer seems to come a little earlier every year (even though the actual warmness of the weather keeps creeping later and later; are we going to have winter this year, anyone?). Call me silly, but I like to think of the end of summer as that day on the calendar that falls in the middle of September, after my birthday (my birthday, Sept. 16, is in summer, but it has never, ever felt that way even though I know it's always hot on my birthday). This marks my 39th summer if you count that first one I was born during in 1974, and I'm sure many of them seemed really long or really short depending on how old I was. For me, it seemed like the summers of my childhood lasted FOREVER. Now it seems like they zip by. In a flash. Especially this one. It's been a busy one, filled with lots of travels, family visits and...