Otra vez, en Español

Mom's been taking Zadie to Spanish classes. I think they've gone for three weeks. Apparently, she mostly wanders around the room and sits in all the other mothers' laps. Unlike the older kids, she has no concept of sitting down and listening to a teacher. So Mom was thinking, well, maybe she's too young, and we'll try again later. That same day, Zadie referred to her head as her "cabeza," mentioned a "calabaza" (pumpkin) and counted "uno, dos, tres." So she's getting something by osmosis, I guess.

She's so much fun right now that it's hard to imagine any period later on being better than this one. She is imaginative, talkative, cuddly... She told me "I'm a lady dancer" the other day, and has also informed me that she loves booby time. She wanted me to nurse her Sweetpea doll, and when I did, she looked at me like I was obviously missing something and said "Mama, pat her!"

She tells us "I'm helping" and "I'm doing stuff" and "I'm busy."

She has got SUCH an ear for music. I sing her a wide variety of songs, but there are obviously some I know more of the words to and thus sing more often. Among those is Joni Mitchell's "California." Today I had just gotten to the end of the first verse when she sang "Ooooooh, lonely..." (The chorus begins "oh, it gets so lonely.") Last night I was humming (not singing) Paul Simon's "Saint Judy's Comet," when she said "Little girl." (Although the lyrics are actually "little boy, won't you lay your body down," I have always sung it "little girl" for obvious reasons.)

We seem to be done with the crib and have completely moved to the big girl bed. It's been since last Sunday, anyway, and she's been sleeping really well and telling me "no crib!" At night, I have started laying with her in the big girl bed and cuddling her to sleep, then getting up. Well, if I don't fall asleep myself, that is. Several nights this week, I did, and I had like a 30 minutes nap before getting up again. I initially cursed the time that I lost, thinking of all the cleaning, baking, food preparation, essay grading, gym-going and whatnot I could be doing instead. But then I thought of how soon it would be before she didn't want me to cuddle her to sleep anymore, and how after that, for the rest of both our natural lives, I won't be cuddling her to sleep, and I decided that all that other stuff can wait.

Here's a video of Zadie, as she would say, "doing stuff."