Mabel Molanphy

Mabel has been dressing…or undress­ing, as the case may be, at dif­fer­ent times dur­ing the day. I’ve made her a wardrobe that requires very lit­tle help to put on, so she can do most of it her­self. Proud­ly, she has been to the store (more than once) with cloth­ing inside-out and back­wards. She gives lots of smiles and gig­gles to passer­bys, which caus­es them to stop and chat with her quite a bit. 

It’s been a fun week with Mabel…as usu­al, I sup­pose. A few fun­ny things have hap­pened that I want to record:

Mabel decid­ed to shove play-dough up her nose. I han­dled it qui­et­ly and with­out frus­tra­tion, but I was amazed how much she could fit up her tiny nose! It took a com­bi­na­tion of tweez­ers and an aspi­ra­tor to clear it. The next day, she shoved it in her ear. I’m afraid what’s next…

While tex­ting the sto­ry to my friend Becky (“Aun­tie Becky”), appar­ent­ly my fin­gers were typ­ing quite rapid­ly, as Mabel announced, “mama’s fin­gers are dancing!”

Today at swim lessons, Mabel’s for­mer teacher, teacher Ang­ie, had on a blue rash shirt rather than the red one she wore for all of Mabel’s lessons. Mabel of course noticed, then announced it. And then dur­ing night­time prayers, prayed for teacher Ang­ie’s shirt.

I am amazed at her mem­o­ry and I love her descrip­tions of things.

Odor­ant = deodor­ant (dad­dy’s)
Gra­nola = umbrella
Straw­baber­ries = strawberries
Bamoon­amoon = ballooon

She can­not pro­nounce “r” nor “l”, which makes some words extreme­ly dif­fi­cult to under­stand. Such as “roll,” which is her term for dad­dy to wres­tle with her. You nev­er real­ize how many words in the Eng­lish lan­guage have both these let­ters until your 2‑year old is repeat­ing an unknown word repeat­ed­ly while you stare won­der­ing what in the world she is try­ing to say! For­tu­nate­ly, she is patient with me. 🙂

Ah, yes. Mabel’s phrase she repeat­ed over and over. Five min­utes of egg hunt man­aged to over­ride weeks of teach­ing about the atone­ment, cru­ci­fix­ion and res­ur­rec­tion. Just like her dad­dy <wink>. Actu­al­ly, after each “amen” of a prayer, Mabel now announces, “Jesus is res­ur­rect­ed!” I guess some­thing did sink in. Every once in a while, she also notes that she will be res­ur­rect­ed, and so will mama and dad­dy. <grin>

How­ev­er, the pho­to moments are of her first East­er Egg hunt, in which mama had hid­den lit­tle choco­lates. She was real­ly quite happy.

P.S. You can click on each pho­to to see an enlarged version

As I exclaimed to dad­dy my bril­liant idea how to memo­ri­al­ize Mabel’s art works with­out hav­ing to fol­low any of the “oh-so-crafty” ideas I seem to read on the inter­net (pho­to­graph each piece to cre­ate a book; frame a new piece each week; place them in a binder; stick them in a draw­er). Basi­cal­ly, all things I won’t do. I love see­ing my art­work that I did as a child, but I actu­al­ly have more fun see­ing who I was when I did it. THUS, my bril­liant idea: take a sim­ple pho­to of Mabel with each of her art cre­ations, then eas­i­ly, er, dis­pose of the art work. Or send off in an enve­lope to grandma/pa and abuelo/a. That works, right?? 🙂

I real­ly do love all of Mabel’s works, but for me, I much more enjoy her con­cen­tra­tion and how she holds the pen­cils, paper, glue, etc. I’ll have to remem­ber to pho­to­graph those things…in the mean­time, here’s a pic­ture of Mabel’s sheep she made at ECFE. (she used glue on a q‑tip, placed cot­ton balls, then used a black mark­er to draw. There WERE lit­tle sticky eyes, but Mabel pulled them off to adhere to her OWN eyes. If I had­n’t been dri­ving at the time, I would have snapped a picture!!)

Mabel’s Sheep