17 Months Old

*sigh* I hate when I don’t publish things correctly….this was suppose to go last Saturday….

Dearest little one who is not so little anymore,

What are we going to do with you?  You are precocious and have hit your terrible twos way too early.  You know exactly what you are doing when you do it, turning to ask us even when you KNOW you aren’t suppose to do something.  That little questioning sound you make slips out and your face gives it’s angelic look while you ask.  When we say no, you pout and scream and tantrum.  Until you find something else to do.  Or you ask again, maybe this time it will be different.  But no, you will never be able to play with knives.  I’m sorry.  We are the meanest parents ever, I know.  Maybe your next ones will be better.

Your personality and smartness is exploding out of you. You are so aware of the world and what is going on. Mommy and Daddy have a contest that whoever touches their nose last has to change your diaper.  You’ve started touching your nose with us, and sometimes to let us know you need a new diaper.  It is adorable and you KNOW it.  Books are still your favorite thing, as well as your puppies.  It’s guaranteed if you are in one of your screaming fits, getting your “Bubba” over to distract you will make you stop crying, at least for a second.  You’ve started exploring them too.  Their noses, their ears and tails.  Throwing yourself at them too for big hugs, even if you don’t know how they will react.  You are FEARLESS!

There has yet to be anyone you can’t charm your way into.  Between waitresses and the apartment complex ladies to strangers walking in a store, you smile your cherubic smile and open those big beautiful brown eyes wider and do something cute.  A tilt of your head, giggle and *POOF* they are yours.

I wish I could see into your head sometimes. To figure out what makes you want to wear my shirts. What you are thinking as you grab anything with a handle to use as a purse. The reason the wheels are turning as you look at a toy and a box and begin exploring. I cannot wait until you stop speaking ItalianFrenchGermanSimish and start speaking English.

You are my princess and I love you so much. As excited as I am to get you to sleep in your own bed, I’ll miss waking up to you in my face. Snuggling in at night. We are slowly weaning you down to only a few nursing sessions. I’ll miss you when you don’t nurse anymore. That time is ours and I love it. My nipples will be glad of the relief though, since at night, you perform some amazing nursing gymnastics. Glaring at me when milk comes out your nose though, I won’t miss.

I love you my dear daughter.

Forever and Always.  Happy 17 Months.

16 Months Old

To my beautiful precious amazing daughter,

Sweet 16.  Another month has passed.  Another month where, miraculously enough, I love you even more!  I don’t know how it happens, but my heart just keeps growing.

You’ve become so good at eating by yourself.  You love to have pancakes and Eggos in the morning, plain, no butter or anything.  Daddy will pull them apart for you and you’ll very carefully take your little girl fork and spear them before bringing them to your mouth.  Well, most of the time to your mouth.  Sometimes you get too excited that you got one that it goes flying off.  And other times, you share it with your puppies.

They REALLY like you now.  Poor Darius will take anything from you, but even Angel holds very still when you pet her and give her big hugs.  I think it’s the treats you share with them.  Or they know you are their baby.  Either way, it’s a great friendship being built.

You’ve almost learned how to help us get you in and out of your carseat.  You’ll climb up into the car very carefully, stepping into the carseat and giggle.  You haven’t QUITE mastered how to turn around but it’ll be anytime now.

Getting out of the car is even more fun.  You wiggle around with excitement until we unhook the straps and then pull your arms out of the way, grab our proffered hand and daintily  step over and around the edge of the seat.  You’ll walk all the way into the house if we let you, but we only let you do that if it’s nice out and we don’t have plans because you’ll get distracted and not want to come inside if we do.

Your sleeping has gotten better.  You are still eating like a monster but not nursing completely through the night, which means mommy gets more sleep.  Most of the time, daddy does too, but last night was one of those nights where it was 9:30 and you were NOT ready for sleep.  It may have something to do with the bowl of rice and entire thing of yogurt you ate for dinner.   Or was just one of those days.

Daddy says your favorite part of the day is when mommy gets home.  You hear my car slide in and pop your little head up with a HUGE grin on your face.  From wherever you are, you do a little screech of excitement and come running to the front door, your arms held high above your head and “mamamamamamamamamama” comes pouring out of your mouth.  Your legs then get broken for at least half an hour so mommy won’t put you down.

You have discovered the joys of the playground over at Uncle Matt’s apartment complex.

The slide is pretty awesome.  ALMOST as awesome as all the kids that come to play there too.

We’ve gotten closer at being able to video tape you dancing.  You were rocking some brand new dance moves the other night.  It made me wish we were on a reality tv show so they could be captured.  Alas, not worth the rest of the troubles of it though.  You’ve even started actually being in time with the music.  We watched the last disk of Buffy Season 3, with the Prom, which meant there was LOTS of music.  Practically the entire episode you were giving us a show.  It was way better than what was on TV.

I love seeing you and your daddy together.  It makes my heart feel like it’s going to just burst out of my chest.  You love each other so much and seeing the little special things you do together makes me so happy.  I am so incredibly blessed to have both of you in my life.

I love you, my princess.  My heart.  Happy 16 month day.

Love,

Your mommy

Fifteen Months Old

My dearest daughter,

Oh how you tear at my heartstrings.  There is so much love that pours into you, sometimes I can almost feel my heart pulsing and tugging in my chest.

When I watch you discover something new, I’m in awe.  When we went to visit Grandpa and Nana this weekend, you spent most of the time on the beautiful day playing with golf balls.  You would dump them out of the container and then go grab them to put them back.  Sure, that may seem boring, but it was the thoughts going on behind those beautiful brown eyes of yours that were so intriguing.  You were concentrating so hard on those golf balls.  Plotting how best to approach where they had rolled to.  Several rolled under Grandpa’s outdoor sink (their lifesaver when they were remodeling their kitchen).  You were going to get those, by golly.  The little shuffle you do to get your feet into the right place is just so adorable.  Watching you figure out how to grab two golf balls into one hand was just priceless.  Even your Uncle Matt, one of your favorite people in the whole world, said that watching you figure these things out was worth all the hours of crying and whining you do at his house during the week.  Good job, kid.

Distraction from the golf balls came in the form of music to dance to.  I have yet to get you dancing on video, but someday….someday I WILL SUCCEED.  You definitely let us know if you are hearing a song you like.  You will head bang, tap dance, move your arms and spin in circles.  You’ll even wake up from a nap if you hear a new song you enjoy:

(Please ignore the mis-matched outfit. You helped pick out what pieces you wanted to wear and none of them really went together. But that’s okay.)

I could watch you dance for hours.  It is for sure one of the cutest things you do.

You love food now, most of the time.  At least, you love the food if we can get you to taste it.  Then, you will want to eat all of ours.  There are a few things you will beg for and they include: crackers, ramen, oreos, ice cream, bread of any kind, oranges and mandarins, most any meat and fruit loops.  Oh man, the fruit loops.  Fruit loops are what we give you to distract you for about 10 minutes.  It’s wonderful.  The dogs love it too, since you share so nicely with them.

Speaking of the dogs, you are doing so well with them!  You know that you have to be extra gentle with Angel, because she can get grumpy.  But ever since you started sharing your fruit loops, she’ll put up with more.  Darius on the other hand, will take anything you give him and keep on licking your face.  You’ve grabbed at him and almost rolled off the bed holding onto him and he still would come over, lick you and sit on you to snuggle.  I love watching your friendship grow.

I love waking up with your smiling face in mine, ready to go, during the weekends.  It’s one of the best parts of the day, sitting and snuggling and tickling and playing with you and your daddy.  Although, now that it’s getting warmer, I am ready to have you sleep in your own bed too.

Being able to see this, in your crib, instead of next to me will be sad, but also lovely.  Especially as you move on to the toddler bed and can climb in and out of it on your own.  You are quickly becoming such a big girl.  I’m so proud of the little lady you are becoming.

Love always,

Your mommy

13 Months

I love you, baby girl.  You are the light of my world.  Happy 13 Month-Day.

A Letter to my Daughter on her First Birthday

Dearest Baby Soup,

Today you turn one.  It has been 365 wonderful days since you were brought into this world.  I know it is such a cliche to say you have changed my life, but it was true.  Worth every single day of throwing up during the pregnancy.  The pain of growing and changing body.  The 5.5 hours of labor.  In fact, if I could just go through labor again and not have to do the pregnancy, I would be happy.

But all of that falls away when I look at your beautiful face.  These past months your personality has just blossomed.

You must be the center of attention in any group.  Whether it’s just your Grandpa and Nana or in a big grocery store.  You will wave and smile at anyone if it means you’ll get a smile back.  If they don’t look at you, you will squeal and giggle in the hopes of getting attention.

A few days before Christmas you took your first steps.  Not long after that, you started cruising around.  And now?  Pretty much the only time you crawl is if you want to get somewhere really fast.  Most of the time if you are meandering around, you will walk with your hand grasping at your diaper and walk in a diagonal.  We’ve tried to capture it on camera, but you stop immediately and start posing.  I think it makes you look like a cowboy.  You will also choose to climb anything that gets in your way.

You have also figured out how to get off the bed by yourself.  You can almost catch yourself well too.

Your love of music has grown exponentially.  Your favorite songs are the ones with deep bass beats and fast lyrics.  Stuff you can really dance to.  You will bob your head to anything with a beat, but you have only bobbed your head in your sleep to the House theme song.

You got a baby doll for Christmas and are so in love with her.  You give her kisses and love to place in her in her cradle and rock it.  Sometimes other stuffed animals or dolls go into the cradle to be rocked, but they usually don’t last very long.  We don’t know where you got the spanking her from, but I prefer to think of it as burping the baby instead of spanking.  Either way, you hold her by her leg upside down and pat her back/butt area.

Your other favorite present from Christmas was your computer.  This computer even have your name on it!  And you know how unusual your name is, so having it on there is amazing.  It has great buttons and you love to push the violin button the most.  Uncle Matt and Daddy love it too, and are going to use that loop in one of their songs.

Your favorite person other than Mommy and Daddy is your Uncle Matt.  No matter what you are doing, if you hear his voice, you HAVE to see him.  He has to be completely silent while you are eating or you won’t eat anything at all.

As for food, you still loathe to touch anything with your hands and occasionally get into a mood where you do not want to eat ANYTHING except for boob juice, but otherwise want to eat whatever we are eating.  You will gnaw off someone’s arm for pepperoni stick and adore anything spicy.  You’d rather eat from daddy’s plate than mommy’s because of that.

When visiting Grandpa and Nana’s or Grammy’s, we make you sit in the high chair, which you’ll handle for a little bit.  You’ll play with your bowl and spoon, beating things around a bit, sometimes making it into your mouth.  Mostly you just bide your time, waiting for us to get deep into the throws of good food before deciding that you must have some.  But you don’t want to touch it, oh no.  Not at all.  So when rice gets thrown all over the place and lands on your arms and face?  The world absolutely stops until it gets off.

Just this past weekend, you fell in love.  We went to go meet a friend’s baby at his “Meet the Baby” Shower.  A little boy there, 2 years old, was very sweet to you.  He gave you grapes and cheese and oranges and you just wanted to be near him.  He didn’t quite know what to do when you tried to hug him but was very nice and kind to you.  You didn’t quite know what to do when he ran away to go get cake from his mommy though.

You bring so much joy into our lives.  You are so precious and so loved.  I cannot wait to see the lovely woman you become.

Love Always,

Your Mommy