I realized as I was walking back from the playground that, the way life is, I should probably just plan on typing one rememberie at a time and build them up gradually that way. So here’s number two, a memory generated by our playground trip.
When we got to the playground, I decided to let Branwen have some relatively unrestricted playground time for the first time. Up to this point, when we’ve played outside I’ve pretty much held on to her or at the very least walked everywhere with her. So this time, when I set her down, she walked several paces, sat down in the mulch, and started having a grand time playing in the mulch and dirt. This was rather a shock to my neat and respectable soul because my first child was quite different…
One of Alexis’ earliest words was “dirt” (pronounced “duht”). She would walk around the house and if – heaven forbid! – she should find a fuzzy or something on the carpet, she’d stand right next to it, point down at it, and repeat, “Duht! Duht! Duht!” until I came and threw it away. When we played outside, she had a horror of getting herself dirty, so she generally kept everything but her feet off of the ground whenever possible. If she happened to get dirt on her hands or face, oh the horror! We usually ended up having to go inside at that point to clean her up.
When she went to one of her well child visits – it was either her 15 month or her 18 month visit – the doctor was asking me how well Alexis was talking. By that time she was speaking in some decently long sentences, but she was shy in front of the doctor and wouldn’t talk. Feeling put on the spot, I was having trouble thinking of an example sentence that the doctor could write on Alexis’ chart. We were most of the way through the visit, when suddenly Alexis, still sitting on the exam table, piped up. She was looking down behind the table and said, “There’s duht down there!” The doctor smiled, said, “I’ll take that!” and wrote it down on her chart. 🙂
Well, the dirty baby is now hungry, too. 🙂 Better go get lunch ready! And it’s a good thing we were planning on giving them baths tonight.