The Almanac at 18 months.

Throughout my life, I've collected many things: Backscratchers. Owls. Shiny gems, minerals and the like. As a kid, there were unicorns and cabbage patch dolls. Pin-ups of the irresistible teen boy-du-jour.

Every accumulation eventually lost it's glamour and wound up suffocating in a black garbage bag on the curb, awaiting the truck from the Kidney Foundation to scoop it up for it's unfortunate fate. Tax deductible.

And then there are the words. Millions and millions of words collected over the years. Hundreds of thousands of words collected since Opal's birth. Words in dribbly ink that smears against the outer edge of my palm. Words in a variety of personality-defining fonts, tiny clusters of gangs in bold and royalty in italics.

I have no idea what to do with all the words.

What I do know is this, there is a satisfaction that comes from offering the words to someone other than myself. To let them view a landscape that exceeds the interior of my desk drawers and hard-drives. This makes them feel at least like free-range notions. Winged thoughts that could blow into some very interesting tundras indeed.

Truth: this blog has a good many words. Likely a few thousand, though I didn't check. As with many of the human-almanac blogs that have preceded this one, the intention is more to share the facts than to entertain, as it were.

Not much editing, could be some grammar and spelling errors. One straight-forward Ulysses-esque draft as transcribed from Opal's warn little baby journal from where we left off in January (see Front Row: A 14.5 Month Development-Blitzkrieg as Told in List Form.).

Just wanted you to be clear what you were getting in to...

January 12th, 2011. (14.5 months)

Opal sings her A-B-C's. No joke, and with very little prompting. She also says LOLLOO for love you, knuckles pishy and lollipop. Her vocab list for things to be named when pointed at is growing by the day. She nods now and inserts yea, yea in places that are appropriate as well as not. (But you can tell she enjoys how the yea keeps her connected in the circle of conversation in a way she never had access to before.)

Bedtimes are epic now, she is learning to stall, seeing the power in it.

** See Blogs: Eight-minute speed round: Knuckles Pishy and The Fox and the Epic Bedtime.**

January 21, 2011.

Opal is just starting to gain success at feeding herself with a spoon and can color with crayons (though, she is often met with some level of frustration with the latter).

February 4, 2011.

Opal knows many of her books by content as opposed to simply cover-art now and can ask for them by name. She recalls certain books by what animals, shapes and themes they contain and likes to stick to certain themes for days at a time. Doggie book! Balls! She can also spot and identify many different animals (and fruits) in magazines. Knows the difference between Owls and Birds.

She is struck with the beauty of rushing water and refers to it all as waterfall. From the rainwater that pours out of the gutters to water that drips from the sink-faucet, any moving water is a waterfall.

She once saw a 'real choo-choo' while playing at a park while, ironically, inside of a fake choo-choo. (Hence the coining of the term real choo-choo versus simply choo-choo.) She learned the very distinct sound of their long-think horn that day and never misses the sound of one in the distance. (You can often hear them from our house, gently hollering a quarter-mile in the distance.)

She also listens for airplanes and trucks and sirens in her world. Drops everything to run to the window to look. Except for the choo-choo: she's learned she can't really see a choo-choo from where you are standing.

She puts mittens on her hands and walks around like a lobster with claws.

She plays the kazoo, by and large, better than I do.

She sleeps with the following cast of characters: Golla (gorilla), B (Bunny), Baby, Doggie, Raggetty Ann and Little Blankie. She tracks every one of them and any attempt at distillation is noticed and kiboshed.

She sprouted her very first top tooth today!

Is working the No No No No No No angle with puckered lips.

February 10, 2011.

Opal is beginning to make word associations.

For example, she was playing with the words "Leo Koettke" and said Leo Car-Car and Lulu Koettke.

She holds both hands in the air when looking for something as if to say "where is it??" I love that.

More recognition: she noticed that the lotion (lo-lo) on her dresser was the same as the lotion Dora uses in her beach book. When daddy noticed this and pointed it out further, she was visibly delighted and with the association and commenced to pretend to put lo-lo on daddy and B and Dora in the book.

February 11, 2011.

Continues to say yea yea, and nod head.

Says the word Nada—another—very often. Nada Ball, Nada book, Nada doggie. Often when we spot and identify something she is jazzed about, she immediately wants to see more and more:

Look Opal, a black doggie! To which she replies: Nada doggie? Like cool, I like it, now show me more.

She loves to prompt sing-alongs with certain code-words.

Happy = You are my Sunshine.

Honey = Crawdad

A-B-C-D = Obviously the alphabet song.

She says dis and dat —this and that—on a regular basis. She'll point and say dis? if she'd like to know what something is called. She'll also use dat to say I'd like to have that. (We encourage dat, please.)

This morning, she came into the kitchen and said "mama where-a-oo??" (Where are you?)

She also puts the word 'too' in appropriate places. Golla, B and Raggetty, too.

*Alert! Alert! Mid-blog format change! Copying directly from the journal is proving to be entirely too girthy and time consuming, so I am taking the liberty to hone it down a bit. I have that power.*

February 2011, continued.

Opal says:

Wheere it go? (again, with hands in the air.) Uh-oh!

In response to a bit of flatulence Jesse produced, Opal said "achoo!"

Opal does:

Jogging, climbing, spinning, rolling, tumbling. Not much toddling going on for a toddler.

We no longer use the front-pack—Opal is officially too large and in charge. Only the backpack and stroller form here on out.

Opal moments:

We were listening to the Beatles in the morning over breakfast. Hey Jude came on and J and I were singing along— more than pretty animated for that early hour—and Opal waltzed right over to her little piano, banged a flat-handful of keys and shouted HI JUDE!

March 2011...

Opal says:

Opal is beginning to assemble short sentences. No joke.

To daddy over breakfast, she said Mommy love me. This is astounding because we often say Mommy loves you and Daddy loves you, but rarely, if ever, have we used the word 'me' in that context. She figured out the me on her own.

Loves to list her family: mama, papa, ama, papa...as well as her friends: connor, pierce, eva, baby hannah (aka baby athena). And often throws an extra elmo or color —red— in there for good measure.

Says Bye! Bye! See you soon! Kissa hug, kissa lucy!

She's been playing word games, saying a word or sound and then looking at me as if expecting something. I repeat it sillier and she cracks up! She then repeats it even sillier and I crack up and the chain goes as long as we want it to.

There are more vocab words that I can keep track of. This month she wowed her daycare lady with dinosaur. She wowed me with trampoline.

By the end of the month she has said: Read book, mama here, open door, drink(a) water, come here, sit down, hi truck.

Two word sentences are a sinch.

Opal does:

She spouted a second top tooth!

Takes her stuffed animals for a ride in the laundry-basket choo-choo. We fashioned a tunnel out of an afghan, a chair and a low wall and she couldn't stand when the cat lied on the aghan. kitty tunno! kitty tunno! she whines, like get him offfffff mom. Two going on thirteen, she is.

Still two naps a day. We tried for one nap last month and another at the end of this month and she was just plain too fussy through the day. Two naps = more catch-up/chill/writing time for mommy. One nap = more time for social possibilities. It's a toss up.

We continue our morning identifaction-walks. I hope those never end, even when she's driving. We look for geese and squirrels and (other) birds and airplanes and pretty trees. She loves to touch leaves and branches and tree bark. If we don't see something she was hoping for, she'll say wheeere doggie? (or wheere Sophie, wheeere Moose—specific dogs) and raise her hands in the way that slays me.

She replies to questions now. For example (when fussing in the back seat of the car):

What's wrong, Opal? To which she replies Bright Light, Bright Light! (The sun's in her eyes.)

Plays pretend in more and more elaborate ways. Play tea-party? Is her baby tag line. She makes oatmeals and soups and applesauce-yogurt and serves it to everyone from the stuff-animal lobster (he has the best manners) to the ball we got at the zoo. And she'll pull it out throughout the day. We'll be driving somewhere and she'll ask me mama play tea party?

Plays hide-and-seek with her animals and finger puppets and actually plays it up like is it under here? no. It is under here? No!

She loves Tommy and Dora and Elmo (though I have read many books of each that are strangely poorly written.)

Love neckaces (neckies), putting them on, taking them off.

Puts hats and necklaces on all by herself. Has an unreasonable beef with bows and ponytails.

Watches Pishy and Balloon videos on You-Tube with daddy. But, other than Skyping with family, she watches no TV.

Opal moments:

While on a walk yesterday, two striking things occurred. Opal, in the backpack, noticed me rubbing together my glove-less cold hands and said mama no guv? Then she held up both hands, the delectable way she does, and said where mama guv? I replied, Mama no glove, honey. Mama cold. Thus engaging with my daughter in our first real conversation ever.

Later during the same walk, we stopped to watch a squirrel nibbling on a chunk of bread as it peered down on us from a high branch. I said Look! The squirrel must be having breakfast! And Opal replied He eat cracker.

Eat? I never say eat—she deduced that on her own and inserted it in a totally appropriaet manner.

Early in the month of March was when I really began noticing Opal talking in a way that far surpassed repeating and route memorization of vocab. She was piecing together whole thoughts, sentences. She was using speech to interact and engage with the people around her. To get her point across. She was deducing which word would be suitable to use (He eat cracker?!) and placing it on her own. There's now a level of back-and-forth. Communicating.

April 2011...

Opal says:

I LOVE THIS ONE. It all started with reading books to Golla. One day, she took Golla to a book that had a picture of a gorilla in it, held up Golla's head right to it and said Look Golla!! As if to show Golla his lineage, his people.

It's blossomed from there to showing B and Golla all sorts of stuff, particularly on walks and when heaped in a pile in the rocker to read books at night. Look B, a bird! Look Golla! Trampoline! Notha Trampoline! Look Golla! Peoples!

ANd she recently brought two giraffes in to join the fun. (Jaff.)

She says:

Take off jacket?

Kitty lick daddy hand.

Birdy gone. Birdy fly away.

Go see dada work.

Daddy airplane. Bye-bye. See you soon.

Here it is! Found it!

She lifts up found objects from the floor and hollers as if she's unburied treasure.

Opal family play with me.

She loves to say what mommy doing? And loves to reply to whaaat Opal doing?

She often replies with cooking, since that's what I often say.

Opal does:

We've been scouting out all the nearby parks. Some are much better than others for her age.

Also, we've frequented the baby-gym, a romper room of gynamium wonder, trampolines and mats and pads to climb on. Blow up bouncy-castles, indoor slides and balls galour. I've never seen anything like it. And Opal's coordination has improved noteably since she started, with navigating bumps and steps and stairs.

She loves to climb on the furniture. With the aide of a box or bowl to improvise where a step would be, she has no problem getting on the couch or chair. There was one time when she got up onto the couch without anything to step on and I about toppled right over.

She's been trying to jump off the ground from standing, with minimal success. But she looks like a wildly precious twitch-necked little bird when she's really giving it her best shot.

She drinks pretty well from a plastic cup, while sitting.

By the end of the month, Opal is starting to get time-outs for not listeneing to mama as well as missing her evening books for throwing a fit before bed. I definitely need assistance with disciplining her in pulbic places, where she's been acting up when it's time to leave. Jesse and I are investigating the book (empire) Love and Logic as well as Dr. Sears' Discipline Book.

UPPA MOMMA—Opal's been quite clingly lately, wanting momma anytime her comfort wanes in the slightest.

Opal moments:

We had a sandbox delivered and on the front was a photo of two kids playing in their fabulous sandbox. Opal saw it so I told her, "Opal! It's a sandbox for you! Not knowing if she even knew what a sandbox was by name. She did. Kids! Kids! She shrieked. Play with kids! Dada off, pointing, Dada off! Since I told her Daddy would put it together, she was expressing how she wanted for daddy to come home and make it real, make the kids come off the box to play with her! She stood and stared out the window for a long while as I warmed her milk and got her room ready for bed. She started walking to her room, then stopped short to go back, look out the window one more time and whiper kids as she finally made her way down the hall. (To this scene, I simply shake my head and say My God This Child.)

She's able to remember moments I've long since forgotten. An example: On one of our morning walking routes, at a very particular spot, she has been saying kitty. kitty walk. And up until recently, I thought she was saying how she wished there was a kitty to see during our walk. Wrongo, mama. It hit me like a tree that there was a walk we went on weeks and weeks ago when, at that very spot, a kitty crawled out from somebody's backyard and walked the length of a house with us. That was it, then he was gone and Opal has thought of him every time we passed that certain spot ever since. I dead forgot about him.

In conclusion...

I know quite well that, if we ever have a second, I'll never write this much about him. Or, hell, maybe I will. Maybe I'll just print this out and make hand-written notes in the margins, marking what is accurate and what is inaccurate for Little Grime's #2.

But there's no harm in indulging the reflection, the waxing, the gloating for the time being. It's all way too precious to zoom straight through. I have a ball thinking about how far this little lady has traveled in the last many months. How fearless. And still so far from self-refelction, self-consciousness. Not a single, solitary obstacle. No hindrances, what-so-ever.

I write and I re-learn this.

xo.

Opal and the Potty: Phase I.

Reporting on April 25th, 2011.

Opal do it, is a phrase that is swiftly gaining momentum.

Opal continues to practice the art of mimicry, taking it to more and more advanced levels as she grows older. When she sees mama messing with her hair she yells, mama hair! Opal hair! And messes with her own hair. When mama announces she is going to brush her teeth, Opal is promptly standing in the bathroom doorway, chanting Dor-a, Tom-mee, Dor-a, Tom-mee, the characters on her toothbrush and toothpaste, receptively. I once inadvertently proclaimed fresh water as I rinsed my toothbrush and ever since Opal has incorporated at least one request for fresh-a-water during the brushing session as well.

She also assimilates the mimicry into her vivid world of pretend. She makes oatmeal and coffee almost exclusively at her tea parties. Sometimes apple-and-yogurt make a cameo, but every item on her menu came directly from what was actually served at breakfast. (Daddy drinks the coffee.)

Nobody suggested a potty. Dr. Sears says to not even think about potty-training until they are two. But I was unexplainably enticed by a cute little biodegradable potty during one of my recent therapeutic shopping bouts and so I bought it. I figured Opal could put her B on it for pretend, or sit on it with her clothes on while mama pees.

She immediately understood and wanted to go to the bathroom whenever I went in, wanted to sit on the potty just like mommy. She even pretends to wipe, puts the paper in the toilet and helps mama flush. She got all that in a few short days.

Then the books arrived. Again, with no motive aside from getting her accustomed to the lingo and the image of a potty with a naked little apricot-body along side. Once Upon a Potty and Potty were introduced only yesterday morning and Opal has wanted to read nothing else since.

She likes the part in Once Upon a Potty where Prudence's mom tells all the things that a potty is not intended for— A birdbath? No!.. Opal smiles and says birdee! She then shuffles through the (real paper) pages, saying to herself where birdy? where birdy?

She likes the part in Potty where the cute little smudge-edged asexual baby finally pees in his little potty. His expression is one of elation, fabulously portrayed, and the next page is an explosion of super-hero stars surrounding the words I Did It! Opal points and says stars! with a slight proud smile brought on from by-proxy pride. The next page shows the Mommy, Daddy, cat and dog all parading behind the baby, shouting HURRAY! as he holds up a partially unrolled roll of toilet-paper like a banner. Opal preempts the turning of the page with a resounding Hurray!

This morning, as we were preparing for our walk, Opal began to tug at the sleeve of her pajama. I thought maybe there was an itchy patch, so we headed to her room to change. By the time we got to her bedroom, she had pulled an arm out of the neck-hole, something she has never come close to doing before. I unzipped her and started to put a shirt over her head when she said No! Naked baby! And I realized that, ahh, yes, she wants to be naked like the babies in her book. And she wants to be on the potty.

Wow. Like a sponge she is.

So we commenced go a very different direction than our walk and spent the next 20 minutes in the bathroom. She sat on the potty. She stood up. She wanted me to read to her. She stood up. She wanted to read to herself. She stood up. Naked the entire time and clearly having a ball.

This entry-level potty-progression has taken less than a week and a half. I supposed it makes sense that the child who wanted to be in her own bed at 4 months and weaned herself at less than a year old would be raring to go with the next exciting developmental task. My main mission as a mama at this time is to provide a few tools and books and some well-placed encouragement and then stay the hell out of the way.

Oh, and to continue to use the toilet myself to give her something to model, which shouldn't be a problem at all.

Good Morning.

My breakfast. My morning. Daddy's breakfast. Good morning.

—From the Children's Book My World.

Entering Opal's room in the morning is like cracking an egg and climbing inside, in the very best sense.

The inner-elements have remained consistent since Opal began sleeping in her own room, over a year ago.

There's the elephant humidifier that exudes moisture from it's trunk like a sort of non-verbal charm. Vapor! as Opal refers to it. (We are currently on the 3rd Elephant humidifier—we just continue to run their little motors into the ground.) There's the vertical space heater that stands as solid as a Beefeater. Her room encases a different ecosystem from the rest of the house, with it's supplemental warmth and humidity.

There's the noise machine that works as a tiny plug-in version of the Old Lady who only stops whispering hush when we switch her off. There's the froggie ceiling-projection nightlight. Things do not require a proper face to adopt character-status and when one of them is missing, it doesn't take long to notice.

The well-established morning routine begins by greeting our sleepy-eyed little cherub. With her sideways bedhead looking like it's been assaulted by the elements, she squints and rubs an eye. Even when awoken from a deep sleep, she is a cheerful little girl. A poor mood only comes from attempting to rush her wake-up process, to get-the-show-on-the-road when there is someplace to be. It was made clear long long ago that it's a much better idea to shave 15 minutes from her sleep or nap in order to negate the hustle.

She stirs, sits, stares, snuggles then shifts a bit and drowsily hands over B or Golla, which is a customary Opal-greeting (not limited to sleepytime-chatter). There's another quiet pocket of time while the vapor continues to blow and the little machine continues to whisper hush. Perhaps another eye-rub or a stretch to follow. I whisper good morning to all of her animals, touching them each on the head as I do, Good morning Golla, Good morning B...moving gently in the periphery, not yet directly towards her. Suggesting movement or activity too early results in a resounding NOOOO! as she digs deeper into the crib-heap, adding an easy 10 grumpy-minutes to the process.

On her own accord, Opal eventually whispers, drink milk? read book? up?

Lifting her from the crib for the first time in the morning is much like the first good stretch of the day, the first deep, lung-expanding inhale that shakes the dust right off. The fleece jammies are slightly damp with sweat, limbs dangling loosely like B who is clutched in her tiny pear-pit hand. She shifts her weight towards the rocker and we sit in the darkness, wrapped in the down comforter from her crib. The familiar chocolate-colored bunnies cavort across the fabric on her chest.

There is one massive, collective sigh and we rock, gently like a canoe in languid waters. We rock, moving neither forward nor backwards, as Opal slurps down her milk from the red sippy.

This is the longest stretch of stillness she will inhabit for the entire day.

Read book, she whispers as she comes up for air, bright light. She is ready to switch on the light and begin the day, erase the precious cozy shadows and crispen the edges. But I continue to rock and rock in the dark, putting off the sequence of activities, staving off our inevitable emergence from the egg for as long as she allows, as the milk dissolves from her cup like sand in an hourglass.

Family!

We have a book called "Houses Around the World," an adorable little National Geographic publication that illustrates all kinds of houses from Igloos to leaf-houses to houses with sliding paper doors. It ends with a very basic Victorian house, typical in North America, where the walls are removed to exhibit the hustle and bustle of a family inside: a mustached daddy whipping up something in the kitchen, a kid jumping on the bed upstairs, free from supervision, a middle-aged mama shaking sheets out the window. The last line of the book is (ahem, from memory) "Do you know what a house looks like? It depends on where you roam. But when a family lives inside, a house becomes a home."

Opal has learned to gleefully shout family! when we reach the last page and the cross-sectioned suburban residence. She then points to the generic family members on the page and proudly lists Ama, Papa, Uncle Kees, Stella, Grammy, Grampy, Uncle Will, Uncle Dave, Alex and Loo Loo and GG!

She recites her family-list whenever it pops into her little mind, which is quite often, while in the car or considering who to invite to a tea party. More often than not an abstract entity joins the list, making a one-time-only cameo appearance, not unlike the stranger who happens to stroll through the background of a family photo, frozen and involuntarily included in the family for just that moment.

It goes something like this:

Ama, Papa, Uncle Kees, Judy (?)...

Grammy, Grampy, Elmo, Loo Loo...

Opal calls my mom and dad Ama and Papa, which is what her 6 year old cousin has always called them. My mom has made the exceptional effort never to allow more than 2 months go by without seeing her granddaughter. On Opal's 1st birthday, we calculated that Ama had flown out to see Opal 7 times in that first year of her life.

(This number doesn't even include the time we flew to Ohio last spring and the time we all met in Hilton Head! And in the 6 months since then, we've flown out once more and Ama's flown out twice more. We are talking about a whopping total of 12 Ama-visits, 6 Papa-visits, 3 Stella-and-Chris-visits and 2 Ohio-trips in the first year-and-a-half of Opal's life. These are impressive numbers by anyone's standards, to be sure, let alone for family who lives 1200 miles across cross-country. Exceptional numbers. Gold star.)

While I was pregnant, my mom witnessed a scene at the airport that troubled her. A small child and her mama emerged from their gate and into the arms of an awaiting grandmother. The child clearly did not know her grandma nor want to go to her, wriggling out of her arms and adhering herself back to mom's leg. After viewing this, Linnie vowed to do whatever it took to assure that her granddaughter in Colorado KNOWS her. And it's safe to say she's fulfilled that declaration with flying colors.

We set up a guest bedroom in our basement with Linnie in mind: beautiful paintings, empty hangers and drawers for her to fill, room in the downstairs bathroom for her toiletries. When she stays with us, Opal interprets any noise coming from below as AMA! When Ama surfaces, preluded by the telling squeak of the stairs, and peeks her sweet little face over the railing, Opal squeals with delight.

Between the visits and the regular Skyping sessions in the interim, Opal has always recognized her Ama. And her Papa too.

Last weekend was the 3rd trip my Dad has made to Colorado and the 5th time he's seen Opal since she's been born. Opal totally knows her Papa. She recognizes the face that blows her kisses and plays peek-a-boo over Skype. The scarlet-and-grey attire and the wide grin.

Opal has always enjoyed spending time with both her Ama and Papa but there was something so grown-up about their respective bonds and exchanges when they visited last weekend. There was something far more complex happening than simply keeping company, being entertained; there was a very clear relationship developing. With communication and understanding and all that big-girl stuff. Eavesdropping from the kitchen, I was awestruck.

Ama is the queen of endlessly noticing Opal's precious idioms which are often airy and easy to miss. She has a grand ear for such details and makes a point of acknowledging each of them so that Opal beams from the dose of recognition. Ama relishes the tea parties, set up with meticulous detail, cups, plates, many-things-acting-as-faux-snacks and a round of thirsty stuff animals. She chuckles and chortles when the whole thing comes crashing down like a sand castle when Baby-zilla comes clonking through. Ama also rides in the back of the car with Opal, always has, and I find myself turning off the radio to listen in on the sacred little world they create. Ama read book, Opal says. They read and they chat and they laugh and they whisper. Opal throws B and Ama tickles Doodle-legs. Ama reports on the priceless exchanges to the people in the front.

In the morning, Papa comes up just after Opal materializes from her room, an early hour when most civilians (especially vacationing ones) are still deep in sleep. They play choo-choo with the plastic laundry basket that Papa fashions with a dog leash, filled with animals and blankets. They make a tunnel out of an afghan draped over the railing and the chair. Papa races to stack the blocks as high as he can before the heavy-handed baby comes down upon them. They read the book with the Golla (gorilla) and Papa plays the guitar for her, encouraging her to strum along. Papa is very conscientious of Opal's space and very careful not to encroach or crowd her, which is not the most common approach for one to take with toddlers, but one she responds to with magnetic eagerness to engage even more.

Ama and Papa both come devoid of any agenda or expectation, undoubtedly the most successful modus operandi when navigating Toddlerville. The outcome is a series of unscheduled gems: doggy-watching from the wagon, a giggle-fit on the swing, an ever-entertaining, kissy-huggy (not without some butting-of-heads to keep things balanced) visit from cousin Max. A hilarious trip to the baby-gym (trampoline!) and a lovely visit with GG at Zaidy's in Denver.

And there was the moment when Opal hollered waterfall! as she peered out the back door with a finger pointed and stubbed into the glass. The snow was melting from the back-porch table and dribbling in a perfect vertical stream to the ground. Sun-streaked and smooth, the perfect itty-botty waterfall. You can't plan for moments like that and they require a highly-tuned audience to be noticed. Connoisseurs, in a way.

For weeks after Ama and Papa leave, Opal wakes up asking, where Amapapa?

Today we were having a tea party, serving primary-colored snacks to her doggie and turtle, when Opal asked with guileless sincerity Ama want tea?

Ama went bye-bye to Ohio, sweetie. Is all I can think of to say, uncertain of how much of this she really understands. But she and Papa love you very much.

And your Turtle looks like he could really use some more tea.