Emma Grace was getting dressed yesterday morning when it rolled out from somewhere– a marble. They are all over the house. I used to have them in a tidy leather bag I bought p. c. (pre-children) from American Eagle or some place like that. The boys have played with them occasionally, but since Emma Grace’s interest in them, they have spread all over the house like so many… well, marbles.
I have thought, when from time to time I’ve spotted them on top of the washer, on top of my dresser, piled near the bookcase, that I would just gather them up and return them to their leather bag, but I can’t seem to spot bag and marbles together. And so they remain far flung items, turning up randomly and inconsistently and, sometimes, annoyingly.
But that is not the point of this post. The point of the post is that when Emma Grace saw the marble yesterday, she called it a marble. And I know that sounds good and appropriate to you, but that’s because you didn’t know that she used to call them “narbles.” Like this: “Mommy, isn’t this a pretty narble?” And “Do you want to play with the narbles?” And “I put all these narbles in here, Mommy.”
We like narbles. We like that she calls them that. Or, I should say, called them that.
The other morning we had oytmeal for breakfast. The children love oytmeal, and I always call it oytmeal and discourage the boys’ correction (“It’s oatmeal. Oat-meal!”), because who knows how long it will last?
She also used to say, for that remarkable and mystical sea creature, “knee-source” rather than seahorse. I called them that, too, wanting to encourage her adorable mistake, some evidence of how very young she was. I don’t know when or how she realized her error, but she has not, despite our best efforts, been disabused of her new, “correct” pronunciation. They are now seahorses, and always, I fear, will be.
And now we have marbles.
Sigh.
They grow up so fast. Don’t they grow up so fast? They grow up, no matter how we try to hold them, to keep them small, to cling to the dear, sweet, lisping ways of their babyhoods.
The best we can do, I suppose, is to enjoy it as it comes, to pay close attention and, occasionally, perhaps, to write things down. That way we’ll always benember the way they are, or were.
She still says that one, by the way: “benember.” We all say it that way, and I hope we do so for some time to come.
