Marks in the Sand

I'm starting to think of these entries like the marks that are left in the sand after a wave washes to shore and then recedes. I feel like I see Tess trying new skills, delighting in new things, and as soon as I write it down, it changes. A month later, those same skills feel so ordinary it's a wonder that it ever struck me as surprising. Yet it's kind of fun to watch my impressions change as she grows, and to remember that there was a day when I couldn't fathom that she would ever walk.

 

 

On that note, one of Tess's favorite toys right now is a set of five stones that I keep in a small pottery vase. The stones have various sentimental memories attached to them, and I made the little vase about ten years ago. Tess likes to take the rocks out, put them back in, pour them on the floor, pound them against each other, etc., etc. She plays with them everyday, often for long periods of time. She calls them "rots" because she can't pronounce the [k] sound.

She's also working really hard to memorize words in favorite songs and books. She loves books that have rhyming couplets, and she tries to memorize the last word in each set. When we read The Going to Bed Book by Sandra Boynton, she tries to say about two words on each page. I often read and then stop, and she fills in the missing word for me. (Or some approximation of the word.) At the end of that book, "they rot and rot and rot to seep."