New shoes -

New shoes, new shoes,

Red and pink and blue shoes,

Tell me, which would you choose,

If they'd let us buy?

Another favorite poem from my childhood - your Mom liked it too. I've been reading it and others to you at lunch time from my old books. You seem to enjoy the rhythm and rhyme and you like to touch the colors on the pages.

When your Tia China and Nina and Tia Baby went away this summer your Mom said - "no more clothes, but she could use some shoes..." So of course you got clothes anyway, and toys. But you also received a collection of footwear to replace the pretty white shoes you'd been wearing with almost everything.

Not much red and blue, mostly pink, of course. But you do have quite a selection.

The ones that fit you best at the moment are pink with flowers.

And, oh, yes - you do have some footwear which we'd been saving for just the right occasion which now fits - and they're not pink.

Other firsts this week included your first picture with your Tio Tito (we're still waiting for Tio Luis to hold you), and your first splash in the swimming pool - feet only for now. You loved the water and probably would have jumped right in.This week seemd to be all about feet somehow.

Sept 14-20

On the 8th of September you celebrated your mother's birthday for the first time. We were a small group - most of your Mom's friends and all of the family were travelling. The first week of September in Venezuela is the last chance for vacation before school starts on the 15th. But your padrinos, both Israel and Enrique, and Monica, your madrina Hilda's sister were in attendance. Your mother was still on a restricted diet for your skin alergy. She could have wheat now, and sneak in an egg occasionally, but no milk yet, so the cake was a bobka, without creamy icing. Your Uncle Randy wasn't really convinced that this was a birthday cake ??

Happy Birthday Mommy!!

Sept 7-13

Shades of RLS -

Every evening (to the utter amazement of many of our Venezuelan aquaintences who are aghast at the thought that we bathe you at night) when we put you in your tub for one of your favorite rituals of the day I am reminded of a poem I loved when I was a child and when I read it to your Mom and your uncle. If we take a little liberty with the words it suits you to a T -

I have a little shadow

Who goes up and down with me,

And what can be the use of her

Is more than I can see.

She is very, very like me

From my heels up to my head

And she always jumps before me

When I jump into my ....bath.

She's been sharing bath time with you since you came home to Savanna from the hospial. You have come to expect the company of this "baby in the mirror" and smile and coo at her all through your bath. I think perhaps a good part of the complaint that we suffer each time your bath ends is due to the fact that we are taking you away from your "shadow".

I can't wait until you're ready for the rest of A Child's Garden of Verses. Few people have captured the reality of childhood as RLS did in those poems.

Aug 31 - Sep 6

Just who are you going to look like, child? You're changing your hair (losing is perhaps a better word). Your eyes haven't defined themselves yet (the doctor says by 6 months we should know what color they will be). Your face gets fatter, then thinner - and every day I see shades of someone else in you. I guess you are just a happy mixture of shadows of us all and we will just have to wait and see how they blend together as you grow.