Girly Girl

My Dear Daughter,
I'm not a very girly-girl myself (barely wear any make-up, never wear heels, etc) so I'm not quite sure how you picked this up, but let the facts speak for themselves...

• While at the store tonight, you ran to the diamond jewelry counter and squealed in delight, your hands and face pressed eagerly on the glass in front of the shiny baubles.


• Last night, you got my make-up brush out and proceed to dust your cheeks like you were putting on blush. (You've maybe seen me do that once before?)


• Last Sunday, while waiting for Daddy to try on suits, you ran to the shoe department, pulled out a high-heel, shiny pink shoe and insisted on trying it on and trying to walk in it.

Needless to say, this amuses me quite a bit! :-)
Love,
Mom

Busy Baby

My Dear Princess,
Now that you are walking, you are certainly a busy baby! You want to constantly be on the move. Your favorite activities are to open and close any door, especially the gate to your room. You also love to take things down from shelves and re-arrange items. Today you opened up the door under the bathroom sink, grabbed my makeup, and threw it in the washing machine. Then moved some of the makeup from the washing machine back to the container under the sink. Needless to say, I watch you like a hawk to make sure you don't get hurt, but it is definitely time to get more baby gates up and latches on!
You also laugh a lot, which is absolutely wonderful. You especially laugh whenever you can get a reaction out of me. Today you hit me with a bottle on my eyeglasses. Instinctively, I yelped, "Oww!" and you laughed and did it again! I then distracted you so you wouldn't do it to me a third time, but later in the day I was holding you again and you got ahold of that bottle. You got the cutest mischievous smile on your face and bonked me lightly on the head. And of course, you laughed. :-)
I love you with all my heart,
Mom

Baby Walks!

My Dear Princess,

On June 16 you took 6 steps in a row. I think that counts as walking! I couldn't believe my eyes. You were in your room, playing with your toys. You took a step towards your activity table, as I had seen you do many times before. But instead of falling on your butt, you managed to take another step, and another step! I counted six steps (step step, small pause, step step, small pause, step, step) before you got to your toy. I am so proud of you!

You are now up to 10 steps and walking really well (for a toddler!).

You are also saying things when the mood strikes you. This morning I was looking for your shoes and kept saying, "Where are your shoes? Where are your shoes?" You responded with, "shoooe?" So cute.

A couple weeks ago, I was changing your diaper and I brought out the big bottle of diaper rash cream (which fortunately we don't have to do too often). You looked at that bottle and said, "Good grief, what's that?" At the time I was so surprised to hear you say that, but then I remembered that Miss Erin at daycare says "good grief" all the time so it's pretty natural that at some point you would say it!

Last weekend you were playing with your Fisher Price phone and you held the phone to your ear and said, "Who's there?"

You don't talk all the time, just when the mood strikes you, but when you do speak it's lots of fun!

Cheers to my walking, talking toddler. (But I still get to consider you a baby until you are 24 months!) :-)

Love,

Mom

One Year New!

My Dearest Princess,

Happy 1st Birthday! I can't believe you are one year new. To celebrate, you had not one, but FOUR birthday parties. Whew! Too much birthday for your poor, worn-out Mom, LOL!

Your first birthday party was in Chicago with Sittee, Grandpa, Uncle M, and Aunt B. We made Sprinkles cupcakes for you, complete with pink cream cheese frosting. You enjoyed eating the cake and pulling at the packages. During that trip, you also got to attend your Uncle M's graduation and tour his college. You also got to meet one of your other Great-Grandma's. How special to be the little princess!

Your second birthday party was celebrated at our home on Memorial Day. We had your dad's father's family over for a bbq, cake, and presents. I went with a "pink" theme, not too heavy on the "princess" or any particular character. You fell asleep in Grandpa's arms. Your Grandpa loves that picture and has it posted as his facebook profile pic now.

Your third party occured on your birthday date. Sittee and Uncle M came to town to visit you just for your birthday. We had dinner at Frisch's and then Sittee bought a kid's cake for you at Kroger. She placed a giant "one" candle on the cake and we sang happy birthday to you. You then proceeded to smear cake all over the table! (I guess you weren't very hungry!). I had to change both of our clothes because we were both wet and covered in frosting! Daddy mopped the floor. :-)

Your final party was the Sunday after your birthday at Ma'am and Pap's house. Your paternal grandma and her family also attended. You were too full on cookies to eat any cake! But you loved the Elmo cell phone that Grandma gave you. When Daddy tried to take the phone away from you (just to see it), you lunged for the phone and yelped, "I need it! I need it!" Everyone heard you and knew exactly what you said!

Your communication skills are amazing. A couple of weeks before Memorial Day, I tried to feed you peas. You kept turning your head to the side, obviously not wanting the peas, but I kept insisting. Finally, you looked me straight in the face and said, "I hate it." I didn't try to feed you any more peas after that!

You point to pictures of yourself and say, "I did it." You also can say, "I want it." While climbing stairs, you've reportedly said, "Up" (though I didn't hear that myself). You will also ask, "What is it?" and "Who is it?" While listening to bagpipe music in the car last night, you asked us, "What is it?" and then said, "It's nice." Your dad and I are amazed every day at your speaking skills. Your speech is somewhat muffled, but the fact that you can say as much as you do is very cool.

I love you!

Mom

Almost Walking!

My dearest Princess,

I'm sorry it has been so long since the previous post. Since you have become mobile, more of my time is spent "chasing" you!  You are definitely a curious baby. Anything that I have in my hands -- you want. Any where you can crawl, you will go. In fact, you climbed to the top of the stairs at Mammaw's house last weekend! 

As soon as you started crawling, one of the first things you did was push yourself up to a standing position while holding onto a chair. You are still doing that, and your favorite thing to do now is to walk from side to side while gliding your hands along an object. I think if I worked with you with the walker you could be walking....but I don't want to push it. (It's supposedly better for your eye development if you spend a few months crawling). 

A typical day for you involves waking up about 7 am, eating, diaper change, clothes change, and then... play time!  You can stack blocks, flip pages in books, pull the pieces out of the alphabet mat on the floor, and poke at the tiniest minutia of dirt. In about 3 hour intervals you eat, play, and then take a short nap. You tend to still wake up about once in the night, around 2 am for a quick drink, then immediately back to sleep.

Your chatter seems to have become more focused within the past few weeks. For example, on April 30, I was taking you to daycare and had a few balloons in the back of the van for a co-worker's surprise birthday party. You gestured at the balloons and excitedly babbled to me "about" the balloons. That's new! Similarly, this morning, you gestured at the picture of you on the wall and said one of your most common pattern of sounds, "I did it!"  (Yes! That is you in the picture!)  This is a change from what  seemed like more random chatter before. Of course, you still say lots of "Mamma, Dadda!" 

Your cognition of speech is improving too. I remember on April 18, you were playing with your diaper pail and I said, "No, you can't play with that" while shaking my head no. You shook your no also and turned away from the pail. (And then you turned back to the pail and cried because you wanted to play with it!).

It's been fun to watch your eating skills improve over the past month. You can now feed yourself puffed cereal and even teething biscuits!  You are also doing much better on eating food with textures. For Grandma S.'s birthday, she was so pleased to watch you eating the puffed cereal on skype!

You were the star at Easter Mass. :-)  Grandma and Grandpa came in town and we all went to Church together. You wore a sweet pink dress with white tights, white sweater, and black shoes. Everyone smiled at the adorable baby!   

Tomorrow we will celebrate our first Mother's Day together. OK, never mind, it's really our second Mother's Day together -- I made Daddy buy me a gift last year. :-)

I love you with all my heart,

Mom

The Valentine Crawler

My Dearest Princess,

On Saturday, February 13, I was playing with you on the floor in your bedroom when you scooted forward on your hands and knees.  All day, I pondered whether or not that counted as crawling. You were on your hands and knees, but you had moved along by pulling your butt into your chest, rather than moving each leg independently.  By the end of the day, I decided that that did indeed count as crawling because your arms were straight, your legs at 90 degree angles, and you had covered some distance. But I didn't need to worry!  That evening, you did a full-out crawl!  You were on one end of the floor mat and I thoughtlessly placed a container of Clorox wipes on the other end.  You wanted to get to that new object, and nothing was going to stop you!  You crawled, one hand in front of the other, one knee at a time, across the floor to that container, then proudly grabbed it and banged on it like a drum. I am so proud of my little crawler!

Love,

Mom

On the Cusp

My Dearest Little Princess,

I am enjoying these last few days when you are "relatively" immobile. I have spent the last 7 months (plus the 9 months before that) carrying you, but that is quickly changing. You have been scooting backwards and rotating to the side by pushing up with your hands for awhile now. About a week ago, you figured out how to push up with both your hands AND your knees, but then you looked around confused because you couldn't move from that position. 

Yesterday, I put you down for your nap in your crib while you were still awake because sometimes you will just fall asleep. I went into my bedroom, grabbed a basket of laundry, and passed your bedroom on my way to the stairs. I noticed that you were on your hands and knees facing the crib rail. I literally just went down the stairs and set the basket down at the foot of the stairs and came right back upstairs to get you (since you were obviously not going to fall asleep). And in those brief moments you had pulled yourself up the side of the crib and were teething on the top rail. Since when did you start doing pull-ups??! 

Here are some posts from your Dad. His writing is a bit more creative in style:

Jan 21: Got another bad report card from school today. Bulling a pair of boys half again her size, three months older, and that can walk. Apparently the toys in question are hers, and hers alone.

Jan 21: Daddy is apparently back on baby's "Cool List".

Jan 20:New life lesson. Home alone with sick baby = very exhausting.

Jan 17: I grabbed the baby's plastic chain toy as she was playing with it. She aggressively ripped it out of my hands and screamed. "Ba Ba Ba, DaDa!" (Translation: Bad Bad Bad, Dad!)

Jan 14: Princess scooted forward about 6 feet on the floor at school yesterday afternoon. Apparently she was chasing some boy.

Jan 10: A pearly white has been sighted peaking through the gum line.

Dec 27: At 6 months old, my daughter recognized the remote control was the most powerful item in the world. At 6 months, 3 weeks, she is strong enough to rip it out of my hands...during kickoff.

Love,

Mom & Dad