a piper post

Friday, July 31, 2009


She is two now, and she is packing even more personality than she has owned to this point in her little big life.

Every day, she adds new words to her conversation, parroting Mama, asking Daddy questions. She owns some phrases now, "there it/he is," "oh myyyyy goooosssshhhhh," and others that don't come immediately to mind. She invites us to come to her little "house" which sounds a little like "horse," but horse started out like "shoers," with the letters all scrambled in pronunciation. When Mom and Dad won't dance, she turns on her music (she has figured out the buttons on the stereo system now) and grabs Nanook (or the broom) for a spin in our dining-room-turned-music-room-future-nursery.

My skinny girl loves to eat, all the time, it seems. She visits Mama in my new kitchen office often between meals for snacks, requesting "petz" (pretzels), or "bulle" (apple), or "choc" (which we all know is chocolate). Yesterday's game was her bid for "more choc," and she playfully challenged my "no, you already had some" with a hand-grabbing, "come on, come on, come on!" The goofy plea was accompanied by a mischievous grin I didn't know she had.

Piper is a re-arranger, beginning with the rearrangement of our lives at her birth and insistent growing neediness, continuing with a curiously genetic disposition to rearrange her toys and furniture all over the house. I think this comes by way of her mother, and her mother's mother, and her father's mother. We have a daily pick-up session, and she is learning to help now.

And she is helping! This week, she performed helpful errands for us - bringing Uncle Kate to Mama in the other room (via telephone) when Dad sent her, and cheerfully visiting the kitchen to grab a water bottle for me after I had sat down in the living room without one.

She loves pictures ("pics") and DVD's ("DD!" "Di DD" - different DVD - "Go Go!" - which means Baby Van Gogh) and "books" and "colors." She "reads" sometimes, pointing to letters in no particular order or accuracy - "E! O! D! C!" I'm not sure she knows many letters past "K," but we're working on it. She counts UP to two, and down from three, which fascinates me, because she knows five, six, and seven separately.

I hear her voice learning to sing and speak the songs and language I know, and I wonder how her thoughts will come together as she grows even more, what she will question, how she will answer. She is learning to play by herself, and I watch sometimes, trying to remember what I played when I was her age, wondering about her world the way she wonders about mine.

She is so alive. When we go out, she is always noticed for her pure exuberance. She carries a vibrance around with her that both exhausts and delights.

Already, Piper is more than I can record, smarter than I can ably describe. I look at her and I wonder how she was ever so tiny as to be kicking around inside me as Button is doing now. I almost miss that small, but as I watch her becoming the person she is meant to be, I don't cling to what was. She was never mine, not really. God gave me the one who needed my love, His love in me, the releasing, freeing, growing love that would let her one day love Him.

So we watch and enjoy and live with her and around her. She has become more than a baby to fill our arms. She is a person, a dynamic, passionate little person who already brings so much to the world. What a good and perfect gift she is to us.

3 comments:

Carrie said...

So neat - sounds like she & Zachary would get along great! :) He is also learning & talking all the time & repeating EVERYTHING he hears! :)

Alison said...

I just love her eyes! And isn't it amazing how cheerfully they serve at this age? My little one loves it when mommy gives her a chore. Crazy!

dancebythelight said...

Wow, she talks WAY more than my boys! They grunt a lot, and I'm always telling them to use their words. I've always heard girls talk earlier than boys, and it seems to be true!

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