Let me put it this way. Ryan and I have been EATING THIS GIRL UP lately. As soon as we pick her up out of the crib in the morning she points to the door and demands in her garbled jabbering to be taken downstairs, she points to her bottom and yells POOP when she’s done the deed, and she has adopted my “oooooooh!” reaction to anything and nothing in particular – saying it in a song-song way to make the recipient of said “ooooooh!” feel worthwhile. You know, things like the jar of cinnamon in the spice cabinet, or when I pull out a new crayon color, or if there’s poop in her diaper.

Yesterday was a gorgeous day. Did I take photos? No. But we played in the volleyball sand pits and buried each other’s feet, we went for a long morning walk, and then played on the jungle gym at the park. Another girl was playing there as well and Ruthie pounced on this potential new friend. This she has also adopted from me as I find myself lunging for various girls after church on Sundays. Today was no different and I pounced on a cute expectant mother. Here was my intro:

[Bee-lining my way to the victim] “Hey!! I feel like we should bump bellies!!!! [And then proceeded to imitate the footballer chest-bump-in-the-air move.] Ryan and I aren’t stalkers, but we did spy on you and your husband with binoculars while out to eat at the same restaurant last week. And, oh yeah, my name’s Carolyn, nice to meet you.”

If she’d had holy water in her hand, it would’ve been dumped on my head. It sure is hard girliefriend dating in this day in age.

Anyway, back to Ruthie and the girl. As Ruth followed her around, I heard the girl’s dad say in Spanish, “Friend (how cute is that? Calling his daughter friend), Play with the little girl, okay?” I made a comment in English but he didn’t respond, so I thought this might be my chance to break my almost two years of not speaking Spanish record, and as we were leaving I said something about how cute his daughter was and Ruth liked following her. And he responded! Maybe I should stick to pouncing on spanish-speaking fathers instead of  girlfriends.

That came out wrong.

Wait.

If that came out wrong in english, I wonder what the hell I said in spanish to that guy. No wonder he responded.

And now I’ll go put a dollar into our cuss jar because I’m trying to stop. Ruth says ‘shoes’ in a way that is so eeerily close to the other s-word (shiiiuuuzt) that I’ve finally decided I have a problem and need to correct it before I can no longer reassure everyone that she is in fact saying Shoes.

But oh Miss Ruth. She’s been described as intense the past few days by a panel of two judges. It’s an appropriate description too. Cases in point: With the windows open last night, she heard her next door neighbor outside. She immediately started yelling jibberish very loudly, very intensely, bringing us her shiiiuuuuzt and pointing to the door. In the middle of this chaos, her eye caught the computer screen that had Elmo’s face on it and she stopped in the middle of yelling to sing the Elmo song (very demurely and softly) and then went right back to yelling. When they were outside, my neighbor said she saw a cat and started yelling, Cat Maow Maow Maow Maow (then looked up) Moon! Moon! Moon! Cat. Maow Maow Maow.

Holy multi-tasking to the psycho degree. She is living up to her middle name Margaret. My grandma was a busy bee and I can still picture her deliberate walk to wherever she was going. From just the kitchen to the sofa, even. Every movement was intentional and well, intense.

In other news, Ruth is afraid of our vacuum. So I deliberately took her down this aisle just get to see her get jazzed up. Aren’t I horrible? It’s like Nightmare on Vacuum Street. Better not sleep, Ruth.

Actually, it’s more like Nightmare on Ruth’s Clothes Street. If she looks like that, imagine what I must have been wearing.

Ah, it’s fun to have a built-in friend. And I sure can’t wait to pounce on her in the morning.