Sarah Speaks

Last night after Bible classes, one of the teachers from Sarah's class ran into us in the hall and asked Sarah to say "Jesus" for him. When she carefully replied, "Sheeses," he smiled and said, "I just love the way you say that."

As I hugged my kids on Tuesday morning and sent them off for their first day of preschool this year, I was astonished to see how much older my baby girl is looking. I guess I've grown accustomed to a boy who needs a brick on his head to slow his constant upward growth; but I didn't expect my Sweet Pea to do it, too! At least, not so soon!

I think Sarah's physical growth has caught me off guard because I've been so focused on the other ways she's been changing over the last few months. More than anything, Sarah has come into her own with words this summer. It used to be hard for her to get one word (seriously, one) in edgewise with her Chatty Cathy of a brother, but now, she is not only holding her own against him, but she is doing it with incredible eloquence. And it's not like I'm biased or anything...

I suppose it's natural for Sarah, as a second-born, to do a lot of mimicking, both of her older brother and of us, but when it comes to talking, she takes this to a whole new level. She carefully repeats the phrases we say to her as if she is cataloguing them for future use. And then a few days later, she'll pull that phrase back out and use it like she's been saying it all her life. 

S: "Momma! Where is the moon?!"

Me: "I don't know; where is it?"

S: "I don't know! It's gone!!" [palms out for emphasis]

Me: "It's gone?" [possibly in a slightly playfully mocking tone]

S: "Yeah! It's gone."

She pauses for a moment, but before I can get back to my magazine, she grabs my arm and puts her face close to mine so that she can look me in the eye and say, in the most serious of undertones:

S: "Is it upstairs?"

Me: "Maybe..."

S: "Yes, it is upstairs!"

Me: "It is?"

S: "Yeah, IT IS!"

Me: "It is!!" [I just can't resist repeating her when she talks as if she's a short twenty-four-year-old]

S: [shaking her head and smiling, as if she was just so silly for not knowing this] "It's not gone! It's upstairs!"

And although Sarah can form complex sentences and repeat just about any word you say (be careful!!), she still can't quite handle those l's and r's and s's... Which, of course, makes her conversation immensely more entertaining - because there is no doubt that you're talking to a lisping two-year-old, even if the words she says and the inflections she uses suggest that there might be a 24-year-old trapped inside.

Like her brother, she employs a wide range of facial expressions to accentuate and entertain; unlike her brother, these expressions are less of the big-eyes/tongue-out variety (see any of the family photos I've posted on Facebook for visual reference), and more of the I'm-gonna-be-a-momma-one-day type. If that is a type. And it is, because Sarah exudes it. Modest smiles, chin tucked back, eyes closed or fluttering, coos and murmurs, head tilted... Or, if a close relative is bothering her, furrowed brows, straight spine, set jaw, authoritative, "NO, Wuke."


[This is a video "reenactment" that Sarah and I made a few minutes after we had the conversation I described above; it's not exactly what she said at first, but you'll get the gist. I know. I'm weird.]