Gelsia

I really love kids, but I've never been a big fan of babies.

 "What!? How can you not like babies?" people ask me, flabberghasted.

I'll tell you how. They're loud, they're messy, and there's usually some kind of fluid leaking from some kind of orifice. As Luke on Gilmore Girls explains, "They're always sticky, like they've got jam on their hands. Even if there's no jam in the house, somehow, they've always got jam on their hands!"

Couldn't have said it better, Luke.

Speaking of babies, this is Gelsia, the youngest daughter of my next door neighbors Páscoa and Texeira.

I must admit, when I met Gelsia I didn't like her that much, and she didn't like me either. She was terrified of me and cried every time I walked into the room. In fact, in that picture she's probably getting ready to burst into tears. Gelsia cried all the time, didn't smile much, peed on my floor whenever she was over (no diapers) and was generally a nuisance every time her mamá brought her along to my house (Which was all the time). But what was I supposed to do, tell my friend "Hey, I don't like your baby, can you stop bringing her?" And so Gelsia became an involuntary part of my life.

It's actually been kind of fun living next door to Gelsia and watching her grow up. When I met her, she was a baby -- couldn't walk, couldn't talk, basically just a snot-producing machine. Slowly but surely, she started babbling ("Ba. Ba ba ba baaaaaaaaa!") and stumbling around. She would stumble to my back door and play with the metal gate. Peeing on the floor became a rare occurrence and then stopped all together.

Fast forward to present day -- Gelsia is not a baby anymore. She walks, runs, dances, and jumps all day long. She's just learning to talk now. It started with "Mamá" and "Papá" of course, but she soon learned "LUA!" (moon), "Tata!" (Hello!) and "Poppy!" (she uses my dead dog's name to refer to any and all dogs... awkward?) She's also got the rest of her family members' names down at this point. "Ne-za!" (Neusa), "Ze!" (José), "Rai!" (Norai), "Inda!" (Linda). It made my day when one of the first names outside of her family that she learned was "En-ah!" (Helena! ME!)

These days, Gelsia comes over to my house voluntarily. She wanders up to the back door, pounds on it with her tiny little hands, and shouts "SENSA!" (Com liçensa, or 'excuse me') When I open the door, she smiles and says my name or shouts 'Tata!' She likes to look at my pop-up alphabet book and play with my stuffed animal owl.

It seems Gelsia's opinion of me has changed -- and vice versa. At this point, I've become quite fond of her. She's fun little girl, and I can't wait to see how much more she's going to grow up in the next year.

Gelsia taking a walk with her favorite person in the world, big sister Norai.