Hur

Hurricane Dawna has officially struck. On Friday morning, just for the sake of amusement, I followed her and just watched what she did. First of all, she loves to be in our room or in the bathroom—the two places we’d like her to stay out of. On this particular adventure, she chose to invade our room. It seemed that she noticed I was following her, since she narrated everything she saw and did. First, she approaches our clothes hamper. It’s just the right height that she can pull it over and remove everything piece by piece. She discovers a dish towel, but not finding it amusing enough, tosses it aside, saying, “Aaaat. Yayaya.” Next, out comes a t-shirt, and naming it “Abababah,” she throws it behind her and digs into the pile for more interesting things. Then, she picks up a sock, one of her own. A small, white sock with pink around the edges. It’s the same sock she held in her mouth and crawled around with…hmmm… she examines it closely, turning it over and over in her hands…then puts it down.

Having made a sufficiently large mess of the clothes hamper, she moves deeper into the room, onto bigger and better things. She finds daddy’s racquetball racquet and describes it as “Guag, ooh, OOH. Dooo zizzzoo.” She holds it up like a large mirror and especially inspects the wrist strap attached to the handle. Strings of all kind are enticing and exciting. Next comes mom’s sweater. Not that exiting. All it gets is a gentle “Gee.” A book lying innocently in her path gets its pages ruffled by her minute fingers—that makes a magnificent noise! Again and again, she ruffles the pages, her fingers running over the edge of the book. She is gentle with real books. She just likes to feel the pages.

She discovers me now, watching her and wondering why I am holding this paper instead of her. “Amumum?” she begs by the edge of the bed, but only for a moment. “Guuz!” She spots dad’s tiger slipper. She pokes the eyes and pulls the whiskers—less responsive than when she goes for mom’s eyes and hair and therefore less fun. On the edge of the open closet, she discovers a wonderful thing…Shoes!! Laces and strings at every turn! So easy to grab! So easy to put her mouth around! “Waaaa Haaa [burp] uh!” There is excitement in her tone as she goes from one shoe to the next and in the back of the closet, the shoe rack. The shiny chrome attracts her eye and she’s off again. But this is more difficult. The shoes present quite the barrier to get over, but she manages and finally gets her hands on the shiny! “Dddzzz!” Seems that it was more fun to look at than actually play with, so she stumbles and struggles back over the shoes, back to the clothes hamper, this time it appears that she tries to upright it from its previously overturned position…

And so it goes. Dawna, in and out, over and under, and all around our house! It’s so fun! She wears herself out and then falls asleep, so sweet, so serene. Amazing how much one English major can say about five seemingly meaningless minutes of life… and yet those are the minutes that end up meaning the most to me.