This summer my father had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of being our nanny for a week and as he ran screaming from the house he left the kids a departing gift: new Indian names, as he had once bestowed on myself and my brother...aka Running Fox and Moss. Upon Shawn Joaquin and Madelena he bestowed the following: Dark Cloud and Sunshine.
Sunshine often gets short shrift in this blog and among tales told to friends; Dark Cloud's heightened sense of drama and passion often overshadow her happiness and general brilliance. They're both terribly interesting people, yet she has consistently ended up with fewer photos, baby book entries and stories. So let today be her day.
Madelena is fully bilingual, as I realized in a moment of her total frustration today. She asked Gregg multiple times for something he couldn't understand — galletas, bocadillos, almendras — and then stamped her foot in annoyance and shouted SNACKS, Daddy!
She knows all of her colors (in Spanish) and counts up to 13 in both languages. She can glance at a picture and say "Hay quatro elefantes" and be correct 100% of the time. She laughs like a monkey and says "oh, that's funny" at every opportunity. She talks to strangers and asks them "hey, man, what you doing?" and says "hasta luego" while giving a beauty pageant wave. She loves to jump off high and dangerous places and to shout "corre!" and take off before you know what's happening.
When her brother cries she immediately goes to him and hugs him, saying "lo siento" even if it's nothing that she caused. She has many opportunities each and every day to do this.
When offered a shirt she doesn't like she'll say "Éste? Hmmmm....no thank you" rather than just tossing it to the ground like other children in the house. She says "discúlpame" at the end of her meals and after burping and either "oh, that's so nice" or "gracias, mama!" for any item handed to her, no matter how crappy. She sings constantly, mixing the phrases and words from Pío Pío Pío with Pop Goes the Weasel.
When put to bed she shouts "night night" and then proceeds to sing for the next 90 minutes. Should you cough or sneeze in another room, she breaks her song to shout "SALUD!" She insists on 15 kisses at bedtime, to include eskimo, mariposa, cabeza y boca on demand. She says "te quiero" often and rarely cries, though in the early morning she is known to shout "NO DADDY" and wail if the wrong person walks in to get her dressed.
She is our Sunshine in all ways, so aptly named by my dad. It took over two years to bring her from a concept to our a beautiful daughter, and if I forget to record that she walked at 10 months and learned her letters at 24, I will never, ever forget that the first time I saw her picture, I knew she was ours.
Te quiero, mi hijita. Te quiero.
1 comment:
so sweet. she is a beauty too!
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