For Posterity's Sake: Week in Review 25

On Sunday, while we were out to lunch, a man asked Audrey if she was being good to her dad for Father's Day. Audrey answered, "Yes. I like Daddy."

Audrey began singing in the shower on Tuesday. It went a little something like this, "Eight, nine, ten, he has eleven" (from Dr. Seuss's One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish). Look for her in "Seussical The Musical 2029."

On Thursday, I told Audrey she could sprinkle the cinnamon on our oatmeal at breakfast. She puffed out her chest and said, "I'm big!"

That evening I asked her to set the table for dinner. She opened the silverware drawer, pulled out a vegetable scrubber, and began brushing her hair. Meanwhile, I set the table (making a mental note to wash the vegetable scrubber).

We had blueberry pancakes for dinner that night (I hadn't made it to the grocery store yet, and I was still pretty excited about our fresh stash of blueberries in the fridge). In the past, I've always cut Audrey's pancakes up for her before passing her plate over. This time, I grabbed a pancake and began tearing it in two pieces. Audrey screamed. I put the pancake back together on her plate (I hadn't torn all the way through yet). She yelled, "Can you fix it?!" Jason flipped it over to the side that didn't show the tear. She yelled, "No! No! Can you fix it?!" This continued (with us trying all sorts of methods to soothe her - adding syrup, telling her she was just going to tear it up anyway...) until I told her to put the pieces on my plate and then gave her a new, whole pancake. She said, "Thank you," an almost audible sigh attached at the end as if to say, really mom, how difficult was that?

Today we did some window shopping (and I found one gift to stow away for later). Window shopping being quite the athletic adventure (and Audrey being a good sport), I decided we needed a frozen yogurt break. I got a cup for Audrey and I to share. We got comfortable at a table and she gently touched my cheek as she said, "Don't drop it, honey."

Tonight, she and I were having a pre-bedtime snack. She asked, "Where's Daddy?" I told her he was going potty and would be right back. Then she said, "Daddy is a big man."
"Yes, Daddy is a big man," I said.
"The big man is going potty," she said.

After the big man reappeared to tell her goodnight, he asked her what she had done earlier. The correct answer was that she had gone potty like a big girl. She said, "I picked blueberries!" Then he asked something about what we're doing tomorrow, and as the answer has been several times since Wednesday, she yelled, "pick blueberries!" Looks like we'll be headed back to the patch.

I find myself running a lot these days: swim lessons, errands, play dates. At the same speed, I find myself building an internal catalogue of all things Audrey, as she lets them appear to me. As her vocabulary and physical strength build, her quirks, her likes, her hopes - they all become more clear and I begin to learn the things that are her: those things that are too sacred to spill (frozen yogurt); those things that stand tallest in her mind (her Daddy); and the feats that make her feel a little more like the big girl she is becoming (fixing her own pancake, sprinkling her own cinnamon, and oh, those blueberries). And, while I know we are all more than the sum of our parts, those little parts make for some pretty remarkable memories - and a very remarkable little girl.