Serving Mama
Ess showing her potholders to Mykala.
Ess showing her potholders to Mykala.
Whoops!
We’ve been teaching Ess that people have more than one name. For example, her grandpa Bop’s name is Michael. “I know a Michael, I know a Michael!” she explains, riffing off her book I Know a Monkey. So, my nickname for Mykala is Bun, which we told Ess kind of in passing, not intending to or even trying really to teach it to her.
Paul McCartney, 1965: “Yesterday came suddenly.” I don’t know what that means, but if I squint, it looks like he’s saying time passes quickly.
So, yesterday: I got done with work and went to my parent’s to pick up Ess. She now knows how to put her little shoes on. They look like this:
Mykala and I were lucky enough to see another little sliver of Essie’s personality recently, and it started with a cookie. I was in the kitchen, Mykala was in the living room, and Ess was running back and forth between the two. I’d hand her cookie pieces: one for her and one for mama. She would then propel herself with a little bouncy toddler run into the living room where she and Mykala would eat their cookies. A few minutes later, Ess would reappear, requesting I fill her hands again. After a while, though, the routine was broken: Mykala watched Ess absentmindedly begin to eat some cookie, which caused Mykala to comment: “Oh, Ess, you ate my cookie piece.” It was merely a statement of what had transpired: no judgment or shaming could I detect in Mykala’s voice. But the effect (doubly unexpected given our toddler’s barely two years), was profound. Essie’s face immediately crumpled and her chewing slowed, when she realized that she could not un-chew what had been chewed. She could not, though her motions suggested she considered it, remove the cookie, dry it off, and put it into her mama’s unsuspecting hand. Realizing a decision gate had slammed behind her and lamenting Mykala’s loss, Ess began to cry, loudly. She cried and cried and cried until her eyes were bright red, holding Mykala as she did; a reaction totally disproportionate to what we had expected, yet only explainable by our daughter’s sadness at her mama’s loss. Small loss, big reaction.
The sign in the background says “Happy Summer”.
Whenever Ess wants to do something by herself, she says “baby own”, or a lot of times “NO baby-OWN!” Here, she was in good spirits, and wanted to baby own in the hammock.
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