Remembering

"The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones..."
- Billy Collins

When Lucy was three, Evie was learning about silent vowels in school. She had overheard us talking about them and one day she lay down on the floor and twisted around in a way that looked nothing like an "E" and announced to me, "Look, I'm an E!" I looked skeptical and told her I didn't quite see it. "Well mommy," she said patiently, "That's because I'm a silent E."

I love that story because it is quintessential Lucy, but the only reason I remember it is that today I looked through my old Yahoo blog, a blog where I occasionally jotted down a story or two about the girls just for the purpose of remembering them. It's funny how many stories we have like that about our kids - stories that we can't imagine forgetting, but that are soon replaced in our brains by something entirely mundane like a grocery list. There are so many things I swear I'll remember even as time goes by - the way they say certain words, the expressions that they make - but often they blend together with other memories so that can't remember which girl did what. My friend Natasha sent me the Billy Collins poem I quoted above today and it inspired me to write down a couple things that the girls have done recently that I want to remember before they head off to that fishing village in my brain.

I want to remember how Noni says "no" for yes. I'm wondering if this will ever change, since it completely works for her. Toby, Lucy, Evie and I all know that if she responds to "Do you want a banana?" with a "no" in a slightly Canadian accent, she means yes. If she shakes her head or yells, "NO!", she actually means it.

At 17 months, she's also at that stage where she can say a lot of words, but most of them are indecipherable to people outside her family. "S" is generally pronounced as a "D" such as "dower" and "doap". Her favorite song is "happy birthday" (Yes, now I can actually say I know her favorite song! See October's blog entry: "Noni, part time model") and she regularly sings it to anyone. She doesn't quite have the words down, it's more about the tune. It's also nothing a million babies haven't done before - Mozart was probably playing "happy birthday" on the piano by the time he was her age - but we still find it so brilliant and cute that we make her sing it over and over again.

Another thing we make her repeat over and over again is her animal noises. The girls love going through the list with her and get frustrated when Noni tires of it before they do. They'll sit next to her in the back of the car asking over and over, "C'mon Noni, what's an owl say? An owl? I know you know it. An owl?" Speaking of animal noises, the other day I found her sitting on top of our poor tortured cat yelling, "Neigh, cat, neigh!"

Probably what Noni says most of all though is, "Wa Dada?" ("Where's dada?"). She started this one night at dinner when Toby wasn't home yet.
Noni: "Wa Dada?"
Evie, Lucy or I: "At work."
Noni: "Oooooh."
She did this so many times that it started to be funny. Eventually we just laughed when she asked. Now she will ask it again and again just to get a laugh.

With Lucy, I want to remember her skipping down the road when we went camping in Malibu the other weekend. She skipped and ran on ahead of us until she came to a fork in the road. At that point, she turned around and yelled back to us, "Which way do I go?!"
"Right!" Toby yelled back.
She paused a minute. And then, "Which way is right?!"

I also want to remember the way Lucy can be overly candid without even realizing it. The other day, I convinced her to talk to her grandmother on the phone for her birthday. Usually she is reluctant to get on the phone, but once she started talking, she chatted on and on for about half an hour. Then suddenly, in the middle of the conversation, she asked, "Gram, how much longer do I have to keep talking?" Fortunately her grandmother found this hilarious. Again, I just love how it was so typically Lucy.

As for Evie, she's entered a new stage where she's not as likely to say something that is funny because it is such a different, purely child-like interpretation of the world, but she is young enough (and hopefully always will be) to have kept that same level of enthusiasm for life. When I think of her at this age, I'll remember her dancing the pata-pata for Nid and Tiggy at Tiggy's house, spending hours creating something (anything - a cardboard house for a Littlest Petshop, thank you letters for the Troll at Peek's house, or, as I write this, a complicated snack made from graham crackers, peanut butter, raisins, Cheerios, sugar and cinnamon), playing an imaginary game with friends in the tree house or pulling up her knee socks as high as they can go and urging me to hurry up because we might be late for school.

There are a few things that I will gladly release to that fishing village part of my brain - the hours of constant cleaning (see snack mentioned above), the nights of not sleeping, the frustration that comes with tantrums and talking back. But for all the good stuff, I'm glad that I have this blog to help me remember the things that are too important to forget.