Mothering the mother

I have come down with a flu of seemingly epic proportions. Alternating between chills and boiling hot temperatures, my skin literally hurts. This is the kind of flu where you just want to chug a hot mug of Theraflu and pass in and out of consciousness all day on the couch and watch bad daytime television.

But, I can't. Not the way I'd like to, because Evelyn's here and won't leave me alone. Friday I stayed home from work and managed to have a fitful nap while my mom took Evelyn out for a walk, during which time they visited a friend and Evelyn had a little catnap. That afternoon, Evelyn took a very unusual second nap with me. In retrospect, that probably wasn't the best idea but it was so comforting to have her with me. To help her fall asleep, I recited some of her favorite books that I've committed to memory... Goodnight Moon, of course, and a few really sweet books by Mem Fox, like Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge and Whoever You Are.

Evelyn's become such a book lover, more than ever. I've always read books to her, right from the beginning, and she's always enjoyed them, but now she has a newfound appreciation of them -- she's actually beginning to understand them. Funny how that makes reading so much more fun, for both her and me. She's mostly moved past board books, preferring the bigger books with regular pages. Reading books is now interactive -- she anticipates certain parts and excitedly points out and names things as we go. One of her latest favorites, Whoever You Are, is about how there are all different kinds of people in the world but that deep down we're all alike. There's a line that says "They smile like you, and they laugh like you too" and she always throws back her head and yells "ha ha!"

Which reminds me of a video John took about a month ago:


Evelyn loves the How Do Dinosaurs... series (so far, we have How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight? and How Do Dinosaurs Get Well Soon?). Friday morning, lying on the floor in Evelyn's room at 7am and feeling sorry for myself, I mumbled to Evelyn, "Mama needs to get well soon." Evelyn promptly extricated herself from me, went to the stack of books on her toy chest, rifled through them and came back with How Do Dinosaurs Get Well Soon?. So maybe I can't be mothered the way I'd like to while I'm sick like this, but I can't think of a nicer thing that anyone can do for me.

A great set of lines from that book is:

Does he push back each drink,
Spit his pills in the sink,
Does he make a big stink?
Is that what you think?
No...

Evelyn jumps in at exactly the right time to say "Nooooo!" with me. She even did it when I was explaining to John what she did and recited those lines to him.

So obviously, "no" is one of her new words. She's also saying "hum" or "humma" for hummus, mo mo (Chinese for hat), purple, and my personal favorite, mao mo (Chinese for cat fur). Last week she started blowing at a tiny bit of cat fur, then she pointed at it and quietly declared "Mao mo." It's not too surprising really - my mom probably curses the existence of mao mo all over the house all day long.

Anyway, as this Mama tries to get well soon, I'll just continue drawing from the theurapeutic benefits of simply being with my hilarious, animated, happy little baby girl.