My lack of blogging is one part busy-ness and one part writer's block. I have a lot of thoughts\feelings that i need to get out, but don't know how to go about it. We had the one-year anniversary of the best and worst day of my life, the birth of the BabyGirl. Lurking underneath the joy and excitement that comes with a baby's first birthday is a great deal of grief regarding how she got here. It's hard to juggle the juxtaposition of a beautiful BabyGirl and the single most traumatic experience of my life. I mean, how can you look at this:
and be sad? I certainly don't want to sound ungrateful to have such a happy and healthy BabyGirl, particularly given the fact that scores of babies around the world never reach their first birthday.
In honor of her birthday, i would like to document some of the things she's been doing recently. (Psst, this is the point where all of you non-grandparents can check out). The purpose of this is so that family members can keep abreast of what she's doing and so that I can remember it fondly in 30 years. Also, if i should die before the BabyGirl reaches adulthood, and am not here to tell her stories of her childhood, she can read this to know what an adorable and endearing BabyGirl she was, and how much i love her.
I should probably go ahead and apologize to my future children yet to come, because i doubt i'll have the time to write about every cute little thing they do. My blog posts in those days will probably read, "Offspring #1, Offspring #2, and Offspring #3 all survived from morning until nighttime without any major disasters or trips to the Emergency Room." To which someone will post a comment saying, "What about Offspring #4?" and I'll say, "What? There's a #4???"
The Professor frequently says, as if it's something he's noticing for the first time, "She's so little!" I always disagree with him. Mostly because she is off-the-charts tall. At her 9 month check-up, she was the height of the average 15 month old. So it was confusing to me that he would say she's so little, given that a) she's taller than 100% of the children her age, and b) she's a lot bigger than she used to be. But now that she's hitting the one-year mark, she is not a baby anymore. She doesn't look like a baby and she doesn't act like a baby. When you stop viewing her as a baby and instead view her as a person, then yes, she's so little! She looks too little to be a person! However, if you were to ask her, she definitely knows that she is her own person.
She has learned some new tricks recently, and they are very cute. She recently learned to "give me five." It makes her so happy that she can do it. When you say to her, "Give me five!" she does it, and then knows she did a good job, so she claps her hands to congratulate herself. Sometimes she gets on a roll and wants to show off all the things she can do, so she will give you five, followed by clapping her hands, followed by waving bye-bye. With a huge smile on her face throughout.
She can say a couple of words. She says kitty, night-night, Da-da, Whoa!, and [sort of] yea! She doesn't necessarily say them in the king's English, but we can tell what she means. She frequently tries to copy what i say. She does a good job of imitating my inflection. The other night i was putting her to bed. She was laying on the changing table and i said to her, "And now it's time for . . . [short pause while i opened the drawer to pull out] . . . JAMMIES!!!" She grabbed the jammies from my hand, hugged them up to her like a blankie, and said in the exact same tone of voice, "AMMIE!!!"
Currently she is fascinated with the wicker baskets in the coffee table. She learns a lot from them, so i'm happy for her to play with them. She pulls them in and out of their cubbies. She puts them on the floor and puts toys in and out of them. She pushes them around on the floor. She turns them over and sits on top of them. Her newest thing is using them as a stepping stool to reach items on The Professor's desk that she is not supposed to have, but is always obsessed with. She tries with all her might to lift them up and put them on top of the coffee table, but it doesn't work. She unfortunately is always holding them long-ways when she tries to do this. If she held them short-ways, she would get it. After repeated unsuccessful attempts, she gets mad and hurls the basket on the floor with a passionate "Uuuuuuugggghhhh!"
She LOVES a good game of chase. And she gets so excited about hide-and-seek. She likes to groove to a good beat. She's a tough competitor in a silly face contest. She will eat anything, which is not always a good charateristic in a baby. Her newest favorite snack is diced mango, but she still has a weakness for shredded cheese (not a surprise, given her family heritage).
She is our BabyGirl, and we love her!
Smiled the entire time I read this. But I don't want people to think that you really clean my apartment. Because if they saw it right now, they'd think you do a terrible job!
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