I was sitting with Emmett in the living room the other day, listening to Ava cry about something or other out in the kitchen, when I looked into this face and said, “Emmett, why don’t you go give Ava a hug?”
He immediately squirmed from my lap and, with his dad right at this heels, ran into the kitchen and wrapped his arms around his sobbing sis. I cannot put into words how cute it was. Then, this morning, Emmett was with me in our bedroom as I dressed for work. There were some dirty clothes on the floor near Emmett, and I asked the boy if he’d put them in the dirty clothes hamper for me. Sure enough, he picked them right up and dumped them where they belong.
These scenarios were yet another reminder of the fact that Emmett’s ability to understand language surpasses his ability to use it. Though he’s not letting that stop him from talking a lot. The boy and I frequently have long conversations about…something that, I’m guessing, Emmett finds very engaging and/or important. He’ll point at things in the room and gesture wildly towards them as I nod and smile and say, “Is that right, Emmett?”
Yesterday I sat with Emmett and Ava while she played some old home videos over the TV. Emmett was enthralled with the moving images of his big sis as a little(r) girl about his age and size. She crisscrossed the screen with a basket in her hand and a bonnet on her head, collecting Easter eggs from the yard around our old house. She didn’t speak much, save for a pivotal scene in which she commanded “Me” (Gramary) to sit next to her on a bench for a photo op. I was actually a little surprised when I turned to smile at Ava and saw the beautiful, six-year-old version of our little egg gatherer smiling back at me.