Saturday, September 17, 2011

Loud and clear

One of Marika's favorite words is "empty," which she pronounces in three syllables: "ah-ba-dee!" She'll pick up a cup off the floor, inspect it, and offer it to me delightedly: "Ah-ba-dee!" Or she'll take her own cup of water, dump the contents on her high chair tray, hold it up and comment cheerily, "Ah-ba-dee!" It's very cute.

This is the necessary information for the Cute Baby Story of last week. As you may already know I went to the States last week for about five days, all by myself, for work. No kids, no baby, just me. It was very strange but ultimately not as bad as I'd feared--I didn't have a nervous breakdown and everyone here managed just fine without me. Starting a week or two before I left, I was trying to get Marika to ease off on the nursing, knowing that I was heading to the States without her for nearly a week and I wanted her to be done nursing before I left. We got down to one nurse a day for about a week, then went two or three days without any. I thought, okay, that's that, but then on Thursday night I went in to check on her and of course she instantly woke up, stood up in her crib and stretched her arms out to me to be picked up. I can never resist this, so I sat down with her in the rocking chair--and she looked at me brightly and started pounding my chest suggestively with her fists.

"You want to nurse?"

"Yeah!"

"I don't think you're going to get very much."

"Nuh!"

"Oh okay fine. Just this one last time." So she nursed, although I can't imagine there was really much of anything to be had, and went happily back to sleep.

Next morning, I was sitting in the living room checking Barak's backpack when she came over to me and started climbing into my lap. And grabbed the neck of my t-shirt with both hands, peered down inside pensively, gave me a big grin and informed me, "ah-ba-dee!"

Indeed.

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