A Novel on Seara

On Monday morning, while I went shopping for Sam's birthday my mom babysat Sease & Lije. The next day I dropped by my dad's office and Seara saw a picture of my parents and squealed in delight, "Pama!" So now she's been calling my mom Pama and telling me about things they did. Like when Seara sees grass or a vacuum, she tells me, "Pama!"

On Monday night we had a combined birthday dinner for Sam, my sister-in-law Asialene (whose birthday is the same as Sam's), and a close friend of both mine & Asialene's. Asialene has two daughters, 3-year old Savanna and 1-year old Makenna. Needless to say, Seara was THRILLED to have friends and spent the rest of the week talking about "Tanna". (She says things like weafno Tanna sdfouihe soinree obidofgih".) I'm not sure which of the girls "Tanna" is, but I'm starting to think it is both of them, kind of a collective name.

Seara had a diaper rash last week and suddenly became very aware of when she goes potty. She learned to tell us "it hurts" when she needed a diaper change. Oddly, though, the phrase has lasted through the rash. Now she's all better, but still tells me "it hurts" when she wants me to change her diaper! I finally came up with a trick to keep the little banshee still when I change her diaper - I sing her songs. Her favorite is "Popcorn Popping on the Apricot Tree" because she can do some of the actions (opening her fists like popcorn and shaking her finger to "it wasn't really so").

On Thursday Seara was going through my church bag and found the Gospel Principles book. She opened it to a picture of Jesus and got really excited, then she went around the house and found her Book of Mormon, Greg Olsen picture book, and any other book she knew of with pictures of Jesus. She lined em up on the couch and then showed me each picture of Jesus one by one. It was so precious!

Okay, one last funny things about Seara from me, then Sam has a story to tell. Sease has always loved closing her eyes (in past weeks I've told you about her eating with her eyes closed and walking around with her eyes closed). This week she discovered that she is invisible when her eyes are closed. She be standing right by my and suddenly she'll close her eyes and think I can't see her. I play along and pretend to look for her, "Where's Seara?", then she'll open her eyes and get all excited like I found her. It cracks me up. Especially when she does it while I change her diaper!

Okay, here's Sam:

Well, let me explain a little bit about what’s been going on in the life of Seara. She’s learning new words by the minute, and almost anything I tell her, she will repeat. She’s also learned to tear apart her board books, which has been a challenge--and a bit of a paradox, because she also really enjoys reading them. Anyway, we used to put books in Seara’s crib with her so that she could look at them while she wound/winded (whatever) down. Recently, however, given Seara’s newly acquired habit of ripping apart her books, she’s had to go to bed without them. Last night, when I put Seara in bed, she screamed so I thought it might be good to give Seara a book again to see what she would do now that she hadn’t had books for a while. I also thought she might chill out a little if she had a book to read. So, I grabbed the Book of Mormon picture book and put it in Seara’s crib. Seara stopped whining a little, and I closed the door to her room. Now, I was in the room right next door to Seara’s doing some work, so I could hear what was going on in her room. After a few minutes, I heard tearing noises, so I ran back into the room and took the book away from Seara, who had by then already ripped a few pages. I told her she couldn’t have the book if she ripped it, I put the book away, and Seara started crying again like a banshee. She finally ended up crying herself to sleep.

Well, tonight Seara told us she was tired, so we went through the normal bedtime routine, scriptures, prayer, song, etc. Only, this time, when I finished reading the Book of Mormon, Seara did not want to stop reading. We stopped reading anyway, and I put Seara in her crib. As I was leaving the room, Seara started pointing at the Book of Mormon and whimpering a little. I asked Seara if she wanted to read the Book of Mormon, and she nodded her head "yes". I told her, “Seara, I’ll only give you the Book of Mormon if you don’t rip it. You can’t rip the book. No ripping the book, Seara.” As I said this, she looked at me and said, “No. No. No”, trying to explain that she wouldn’t rip the book. I said, “Seara, you have to read the book, not rip it. You have to read it.” Seara looked at me and said, “OK.” At which point I gave Seara the book and walked out of the room. It was so cute to see Seara make a deal with me. She knew she shouldn’t rip the book and that the only way to get the book was to agree to the terms I had set. So, as of 10:00 pm there have been no more tearing sounds proceeding from Seara's room, and hopefully, when I get Seara out of bed in the morning, the Book of Mormon reader will not appear to have gone through the paper shredder. We'll see!