15/03/13

            The baby continues to develop in all sorts of wonderful ways and along a seemingly normal trajectory. She looks awkward when she does it, but she walks all over the mission. She hums to herself often and can’t resist dancing when she hears music. She waves to almost every person or car she sees and recently learned to give a thumbs-up, so recently she’s been charming everyone with a thumbs-up and a big smile. She understands the words “no,” “hello,” “bye-bye,” “dance,” “come here” and the Swazi word for thumbs-up. This morning as I was leaving my house to go teach, I told her to get her shoes. Whether she understood me or saw where I was pointing and put two and two together, she walked over the picked up her shoes. She blows her food with me when it’s too hot and in church when she’s humming, she’ll gleefully put one finger to her lips and “sh” back at the people trying to tell her to be quiet. She also understands many Siswati words and phrases. But she—willfully it seems—refuses to talk or even imitate sounds. She imitates my movements, my facial expressions, and my singing, but not any sounds I make. She seems utterly uninterested in speaking for the moment, I’m just waiting for when her “first words” are a complete sentence.