When April gives way to May...

...our April-born girl will be in another part of the country, in the hot lowlands playing in a shallow pool filled with water from the garden hose with cousins Max and little Jared and shy LJ, our help's three-year old kid in Pasig, for company.

When Kai/Butones dressed up to get ready to leave for a long-postponed trip to the lowlands yesterday, I asked her who she wanted to see at my mother's house. "Max, Jared and LJ," she said. There was absolutely no mention of the family elders. Children say the darndest thing. When needy me asked if she'd miss me, she said, "No. We've been together too long."

Well, that put Booboo in her place, and I've been filling up the space left by her absence with nothing but work, readings and music in that order. But the music I miss most is her playing her xylophone by my side while I work, her calling out for me to sing every note she picks out on that do-re-mi scale. "Sing it, Booboo," my little bossing commands. And I have no recourse but to stop whatever it is I'm in the midst of, and I sing, often off-key, and she turns to me with a frown.

Before she, her mother Kimi and Granny Suzy left, we had time for a few pictures that I wish I can use for my passport photo, but fat chance in hell will the Department of Foreign Affairs allow any of these. These are my souvenirs for April of 2015. Ahhh, Kai, you are the sunshine and moonlight in my life!

The Wee One as resident percussionist Photo by Booboo Babeth

Our demure look

Our smiles

Our range of facial expressions. She's better at it.

Our sleepy look

Our..."whatever", another favorite expression of hers Photos by my indulgent daughter and Kai's Mamay Kimi

She lights up my life...

...she gives me hope to carry on, and so on and so forth. 

At the slightest chance of a long weekend (three nights and four days), I visit the button of my  life. She changes at every next encounter, her babbling now acquiring coherence to the adults around her. 

At mealtimes, she likes to check if we're all present around the dining table, then points with her forefinger at each of us: "Tats! Mamay! Booboo! Ate!" Then she sits down before her own small dining table (her Mamay and Tita Ida's study table when they were wee girls) to try to feed herself from a bowl with increasing success.

The half smile that can melt the hardest heart

Veteran huggers

Before or after breakfast, she enjoys a walk in the neighborhood children's park for her dose of Vitamin D, then comes back famished, ready for a snack and a yogurt drink. Then she hangs out in her nursery with her toys or joins her Mamay and Booboo in the home office. 

To keep her from distracting her working mom, I like to sing action songs, recite nonsense stuff or read to her. Or we look out the window to count the number of white butterflies. But such are the counting skills of Butones that she tends to speed things up, crying out, "Eight, nine, TEN!"

The weekend I was there I introduced her to my small collection of matryoska dolls. These Russian nesting dolls are a recurring image in some of my paintings. She can open them up and extract one smaller doll after another but not put them back together again. Next weekend, I will teach her their Russian names and see if she can repeat them. 

Her nighttime routine is to pass by the grandparents' room for the last-minute giggles and hugs. Her Grumpa Rolly, whom she calls Tats, taught her to bless his hand before she leaves to return to her room.

They say giving is better than receiving, and I quite agree. But with a grandchild like Butones, I just have to make the effort to go up and be there to be at the receiving end of her unconditional love.

So young yet she already knows her best angle, a trait that makes me think of my younger daughter.

Photos by Booboo Babeth and Mamay Kimi