Mimic

We are at that cute and amusing age where Araella has begun to imitate most everything we do. The last few weeks I have been getting up at 5am to exercise. Araella announces herself at around 6am and bring her out to the couch where she usually spends about 15 minutes watching me imitate strange activites portrayed on the television – namely Tony Horton’s P90X work set. After about a week she started sliding down off the couch and coming over and participating. First it was just doing some calf raises during my leg exercises, followed by a few experimental squats. Days later she made her first attempts at some push-up, getting down on all fours and rigorously pumping her elbows in and out. Later, she walked over to my 12 kilo dumb bells and made a valiant effort to curl them. They didn’t budge, but she did get the grunting noises right.

We bring in groceries and hand her a loaf of bread or bag of chips, encouraging her desire to help bring things to the kitchen. Last week was rather amusing when, deciding she wanted something to drink, she grabbed a 1 gallon jug of apple juice out of a grocery bag on the floor and squat-lifted it between her legs and waddled down the hall with it, plopping it down at my feet with an explicit baby-sign for drink.

She often now pulls out Tara’s sandles or my shoes and makes a go of walking around the living room in them and when I make exaggerating chewing motions with my mouth she mimics them with a goofyness that is hard not to laugh at.

She is mimicing noises and words too with her most common ones being “eye” when you point to your eye, or her wolf call when you point to a wolf in a picture. Her favorite, and probably most cute is her singy-song “Aiya” which she echos wheneven I call out her name – Arrraaaaeelllaa – and all she can repeat is the “ella” at the end which comes out “Aiya.”

The Cambodians of course love her praying-hands-greeting whenever they say “joom riap sua”; the formal Khmer greeting.

All-in-all its a cute and comica game acted out by every child. But of course, with your own child, it’s always the most fun.