This is an incomplete post from far too long ago...simply publishing for future reminiscing's sake...

Power Shine

My how our little Avery has turned a corner. In a few short months she has gone from simply saying words (mostly when prompted) to talking almost all the time and stringing sentences together as often as she can. She definitely makes some other noises which definitely can't be considered words, even tho they have plenty of meaning in their own right. We'll categorize those noises under terrible twos and do our best to ignore them for now. But I've realized that one of my favorite things that comes with little kids learning to speak is how their words and sentences fit together. They sound like immigrants coming to a new country and learning the language, or better yet, they sound like me while traveling in Mexico and trying to recall my 3 years of Spanish from so many years ago it saddens me to count them. You essentially grab onto the few words you know and drop everything else that should surround those words in a properly constructed thought or sentence. I'm no English major but I'm reasonably sure, "ah cookie?" "ah bailey?" and "ah cup milk?" aren't complete sentences...but that's what I love about it. It's exactly the same as when I'm walking through a restaurant in Mexico and I get a waiter's attention just to raise my shoulders, point my palms towards the ceiling, lift my eyebrows and say, "baño?" Ok, maybe not exactly the same...if it were truly apples to apples I would grab my crotch, jump up and down and announce which number I planned to go once getting to the baño. 


So, it stands to reason that since Avery doesn't speak the language exactly as we adults do, she probably doesn't hear it the same either. This couldn't be more evident than with her most recent obsession..."power shine!" It took us at least a a few hours to even figure out what words she was saying and then another day or maybe two to understand what she meant. You see, the Disney phenomena has a strong hold on this family, especially the lone male and the middle sized female. So, when Tangled finally came out on DVD and Blu-Ray Combo Pack (see what I mean?) Abby, Anna and I had already seen it...and become huge fans of it. Little did we know or expect that our not-even-two-year-old would surpass us all in her love for this splendid movie. Avery's TV and movie watching skills probably should alarm us, but being able to plop both our girls down in front of the TV for a bit, and knowing that they'll both do nothing but watch, is a nice ace in the hole. Avery's obsession with Tangled has got to simply be a product of sheer volume and mass. Somehow that movie just doesn't get old, and I agree wholeheartedly. And consequently, it's been watched by our girls no less than three or four hundred...thousand times. Anyway, there's a song which is sung many times throughout the movie called the Healing Incantation. The lyrics go like this: 


Flower gleam and glow
let your power shine
make the clock reverse
bring back what once was mine
heal what has been hurt
change the fate's design
save what has been lost
bring back what once was mine
what once was mine


Sitting there in the second line of this short song are the words no one in this family will ever forget. At some point Avery starting referring to Rapunzel (the character) and the movie in general as "Power Shine." And since she coined that term, it's filled many of her waking thoughts, and hopefully some of her dreams as well. I personally find it amazing that she would see and hear Tangled as many times as she did, and those two words were what she grasped and remembered. Those who have heard her say it can vouch for it, it's so damn cute you just want to hear it again.