when she isn't eating her own hand,

12/22/09

Stella speaks to me. Directly. She chirps and her eyebrows go up and down and they furrow in a strangely familiar way The eyebrows sometimes say, “As we speak, something magical is commencing in my diaper.” When I impart to her the wisdom of the world, her eyebrows may beg the question, “Are you being serious?” At times, but never when addressing me, her eyebrows have been known to declare: "I may be a baby. But you are an idiot."

She doesn’t know how to speak with words yet, but when she does, she will say, with perfect clarity, “Auntie Caren rocks the hizzouse.” I know this because I am an excellent reader of body language, and with her eyebrows and the angles at which she holds her pudgy fists, she says that she prefers me to most people and all inanimate objects.