Journal Excerpt

I really like the way she hunches up her shoulders while she’s walking, as if she might fall right over if she relaxes too much.

I also like the way she says “www-OW!” if she sees anything exciting. She says it when pointing to fish at the aquarium. She says it when she sees the cats for the first time every morning.

Because she doesn’t talk much I tend to forget that she notices things, until she’ll do something that completely surprises me. Like when we walked by the hand sanitizer, she pretended to squeeze some out and made washing movements with her hands. When she grabs her toothbrush, she’ll also grab the toothpaste tube and pretend to squeeze some onto the brush. When I say “all done” after a bath, she’ll reach down herself to unstopper the tub so water flows out. I caught her trying to put her own socks on the other day, and she also tries to put her feet into our shoes. Seeing her do these things without previous instruction is sort of be like seeing one of the cats suddenly grab a broom and sweep up spilled litter on the floor. It’s rather bizarre.