Growing

I spent time with Madeleine and Grace two days before we left for five days at Lake Mead and when we returned, they were on vacation with their parents and extended family. They didn't return until three days after us, so ten days had elapsed before I saw them again. Not only did I miss them, but they seemed to have grown and developed while we were apart. Madeleine's communication skills became more honed while Grace had begun the preliminary rocking which precedes crawling. I want to record a couple of things because I don't want them to fade from memory. Sunday, Paul and I were over at Lauren and Tim's. I was feeding Madeleine. She wanted water and I looked around for her cup and didn't see it anywhere, so I pulled a sippy cup from the cupboard. Just as I was handing her the sippy cup, I saw her drinking cup about ten feet away. I said, "oh there's your cup" and pointed to it. She looked at me with a look of sympathy at my lack of finding it before,and replied "oh Naan". Grace is just about to take off crawling. She is such a happy little bouncy girl. Yesterday I went with family and friends to Mission Bay. Lauren finally got to ski behind her boat. I watched Grace most of the day and a lot of that time was spent keeping her from grabbing handfuls of sand and eating them. At the end of the day, Lauren and I along with Madeleine took the boat over to the launch ramp. As we were sitting in the boat waiting for the trailer to arrive, another boat came by creating waves that gently rocked our boat. Madeleine was leaning on me with her head on my shoulder and began to say rock, rock in a sing-song voice. I launched into a version of "Rockabye Baby" making up the words as I sang. It went something like this: "Rockabye baby in the big boat, when the waves come the baby will float. When the waves break the baby will swim, and there will be Madeleine swimming again". When I finished Madeleine stood up and said "that is funny!" then she said "never heard that song before" I replied, "me either". Lauren told her, that was because Nani just made it up off the top of her head. For the next ten minutes, Madeleine requested that I sing it"again" over and over. Each time I finished, she would say "that is funny!" both girls are so sweet and cute. I love them and am so glad to spend time with them.