Kate has started dancing. Previously she would “dance” while sitting by twisting her upper body left and right. It was cute, and very understated. The other day Den called me over while trying to stifle laughter and we watched her pressing a button on one of her toys to get a song going (ironically it sung “Up and down!”) and then she started doing squats to the music, bobbing up and down with her whole body. I am trying to get it on video, but she keeps running over to me as soon as she sees the video camera. It was absolutely hysterical!

She still likes to climb into the lower corner cupboard, which has remained mostly empty due to her habit of pulling things off the shelves in the back and chucking them on the floor. I had stored baby food in there, which I let her pull down, but the baby food is now mostly gone and the cupboard holds only some unused bottles and cat food dishes. But yet she still likes to pull open the door and climb in, peering deep into the dark corner shelves and playing with the bottles. Yesterday she was under there as I was putting together a smoothie for myself. The blender sits on the counter directly above that cupboard, and I wasn’t sure how she was going to react. So I turned it on and stepped back to watch her. She stopped what she was doing and looked upward curiously. Then she opened her mouth and, “AHHHHHHHHHH!” She was singing along with the blender!

Yesterday evening she was tired and needed some extra cuddles, so I sat on the living room floor with her. She was playing with her toys but kept walking over to me and crawling onto my lap, turning to sit with her back against my chest. Sometimes she would lay across my lap, stretched out like a sunbathing cat, making noise to entice me to give her tickles and kisses. I am thankful she is still a cuddly baby! (Even if she’s not really a baby anymore.)

We ate dinner at a restaurant, my mom, Kate and I. I had a sippy cup of milk for Kate, which sure is convenient in places like a restaurant when I’m trying to eat something too. Kate was feeling a bit tired and thus kind of clingy, but she went into the highchair without much fuss and accepted my offering of cheese and bread. When my dinner came I added to her tray steamed zucchini and carrots. She looked like such a big girl sitting there eating food, then reaching up to snag her sippy cup off the table for a swig of milk when she wanted some. And then of course the requisite leaning over the side of her chair to look over the low wall separating us from other dining patrons, so she could flash her smile at everyone.

I got her a wooden snail pull-along toy, which is very cute and she seemed to take to right away. During the exploring the toy phase when she sat down and looked it over I watched her pick up the attached string, drape it carefully over the snail, and pat it with her fingers as if tucking it in. Yeah, this child is all girl.

::

In other news, last night Kate slept 10 hours. No, not total…. 10 hours straight. I put her to bed shortly after 8pm, and she woke up at 6am. That is unbelievably fantastic.

She’s been waking only once at night for a few days now, doing 6-8 hour stretches, but this was a new record! I think it’s all due to a few things that have happened, the night-weaning being the first step. Also she’s been putting herself to sleep for naps and bedtime sometimes – not consistently, but frequently enough. I try to put her down and if she’s still running around her crib when she is clearly tired then I get up and leave. She’ll protest-cry for 2 minutes or so, not get hysterical or anything, and then she’ll whimper a bit and lay down and fall asleep. If she continues to cry I go back in and try again. I’ve found that sometimes my presence is just encouraging her to play in her crib rather than sleep. But then other days she really does need me and will get absolutely hysterical if I leave. Den still rocks her to sleep and puts her down completely asleep. When she wakes up in the middle of the night I learned to wait a few minutes to see if she’ll go back to sleep. Sometimes she will, sometimes she won’t.

I know when the next set of teeth come in her sleep will get all screwed up again and things will change and change again. But mostly I’m just relieved to know that she can learn to sleep. After all those months wondering and worrying, of having people tell us that we have to do X or she’ll never learn – that we can’t keep responding to her or she will continue waking more and more – well now I know what we’ve done works for her.

I got it on video! Took me a few tries, but I finally caught her. She just started doing this a couple days ago, bouncing to music. Previously she’d do it holding on to furniture or a large toy, but this time she was in the middle of the room doing some kind of primitive toddler hop and twirl. Tee hee! I love it.

We are having one of those days here… the kind where everything is just a big friggin disaster. So far today I have had the toilet lid smacked into me (while I was peeing); the cat fell on me and scratched my arm all up (while I was peeing! Apparently peeing is dangerous in this house?) – it stung all day, too; my finger was bit (by the baby – not too hard, but enough for me to say, “Ow! What the heck?!”); Kate has been whining and crying, “Mamamama” all day, no matter what I do; Kate also has a diaper rash that just won’t go away; and I got my period and have bitching cramps. Oh, and Den is working all weekend! The biting, whining, and diaper rash are due to teething. The cat, however, is just an asshole. An asshole who has no friggin’ balance and sharp claws.

I’ve been trying to let Kate go diaper-less to try to let her poor diaper rash dry out a bit, but that is biting me in the ass. I figured she’d pee somewhere, but at least she’d already pooped twice this morning. I hear sprinkling sounds and I look over to see that she had just pulled my phone off the end table and then let loose. Yes. My child peed on my phone What the hell? (I think it’s fine, she didn’t pee directly on it at least…. just a lot of splashing.) After I got her cleaned up from that she nurses and then pees on the carpet. Got that cleaned up and I hear a grunt, look over and she’s pooping on the floor. On the hardwood, thank the light. Back into the shower she goes. A few minutes later I spy poop on the carpet. How is this ever going to dry out if she keeps having to get washed down? No wonder she’s rashy. Diaper goes back on.

I just went to grab one of her toys off the floor of the bathroom and put my hand in another pile of poo. How many times did she go in a short span of diaperless-ness?!?!? That’s it, I’m going to bed.

Kate, though she is still working on those two new teeth, is still sleeping through the night. Which is exciting, other than the fact that with this new-found sleep also comes a new-found morning wake time: 6am. I am, as you can guess, not thrilled about this. In fact I am trying to figure out how to go back to waking once or twice at night if it means she’ll sleep until 8:30 again. But I’m willing to bet that since she is no longer dependent on me getting her to sleep she is starting to take her cues from elsewhere… like the sun. She has room blackout shades, which are taped down with masking tape, but light still filters around them. I am going to be getting drapes or something to hang in front of them, to see if that helps. I suspect it won’t work, though.

On the good side of things when she does get up so early she’s awake and happy and playing for about an hour before some power switch in her flicks and she crumples in whines and back to bed we go – both of us. Until around 9:30. It occurs to me now that this is why she was on only 1 nap a day so young – she has been combining night sleep with a morning nap for a long time (typically sleeping around 13 hours at night, all told). Now it’s split up, amounting to roughly the same.

Maybe next week she’ll start sleeping longer again, who knows.

A good friend of mine had a baby last week and it has stirred up in me all kinds of emotions. Shockingly, mostly good ones. Mainly am I excited to someday do it again: not just have a baby, but to give birth again. Almost everyone looks at me oddly when I say that, because it’s apparently not a very common sentiment of women who have given birth before. But I am weird and not only do I love being pregnant (throwing up notwithstanding), I love labor and I love birth.

I have thought a lot about pursuing it further, to become a birth doula. It’s something I’m pretty certain I would love doing, something that would give me an emotional high, be fulfilling. It is not, however, something that will make a lot of money, nor is it at all practical with a small child. That’s the part that’s holding me back right now. Den has a very secure, predictable day job. We don’t have any relatives nearby who are available during the day – everyone works. If a birth happened during the day – which they would, given how spontaneous these things occur – then Den would have to call in to work and stay home with Kate. Which may possibly work a few times, but seems kind of counter-productive to me. And stressful. I am thinking that the joy of attending births would be significantly diminished by the stress I experience trying desperately to get someone to watch Kate.

So, as before, it’s an idea I shelve for now. “Maybe later” – later, after the kids are in school, after they are self-sufficient. But then I will probably (hopefully) have a job of some sort… or be in college in order to get said job. (As I said before, being a doula just is never going to pay much.) Maybe I’ll find another way to be involved in birth somehow.

::

My mom was visiting us for two weeks, she just left. My mom and I have never been super close, but we have been getting along great ever since I moved out. It took a while for me to understand – we are just very different people. She is a great person, warm and giving and gets along with everyone. She is always there to help a friend or family member in need. We just clash personality-wise when we live in each others space. It was a good thing when I moved out.

Watching her with Kate, however, really made me think too much of what could have been. Kate loved her, and of course my mom reveled in the attention of her granddaughter. There was something so wonderful about watching them together. And of course it was so much easier on me. Needed to run to the store while Kate was napping? No problem! Needed Kate distracted while I cooked dinner? No problem! Needed a babysitter so Den and I could attend a work event? No problem!

It has left me very homesick – though not exactly missing home itself. I miss my family. I see my SIL’s relationship with her parents, how much they lend a hand with the kids, and I think about bow it could be if my family were close. What a different life it could be. That doula thing? I could do that if my mom were here. Not only is she willing to babysit on short-notice, but she thinks the idea of being a labor coach is wonderful.

I find myself really mourning. And the thing is, there is no way to change it. The area that my parents live, so close to Vancouver, is absolutely not affordable – not to mention the fact that my husband, the sole money-maker, works for the Military. It’s not like he can transfer to Canada. We love this area, we have his family here (but they are not available the way my family would be – they all work). I love just about everything else about living here. I just wish my family were a few streets over, not a 7 hour flight.

Lessons learned from our (Kate’s and my) first trip to the beach:

* Bring an interesting toy to give to the child in case they should happen to wake up before we get there and be Unhappy.

* I need a new bathing suit that actually fits.

* Put sunscreen on your friend’s back without being asked. Otherwise they will think they got it and will come home with a sunburn.

* Swim diapers do not hold in pee. Do not put swim diapers on your child unless they are actually going swimming. Or you will get peed on.

* Those little beach chairs rock! Much nicer than laying on a sandy towel (especially for someone like me who doesn’t “do” sunbathing).

* So do beach umbrellas. This white chick needs shade.

* Freezing water bottles makes a great ice pack. Unfortunately said ice pack did not actually melt enough to drink while at the beach. Perhaps less freezing.

* Bringing a bunch of fruit for Kate was a good idea, she needs lunch or she gets cranky.

* Sand gets everywhere… especially when the sand-covered child who usually likes to run off and explore suddenly decides that she wants to crawl all over mom. Baby powder, however, gets it right off. Neat trick!!

I’m kind of ashamed to admit it, but I’ve been living here in MA for 6 years and I had never once gone to the beach with the intention of going and hanging out on the beach. Once we took my parents there to walk around and eat seafood, but that was it. And on my honeymoon in Myrtle Beach Den and I did attempt the beach, but it was July in South Carolina and I am Canadian – I walked out onto the beach and said, “Oh hell no,” and spend the rest of my honeymoon in the shade by the pool. Honestly beaches kind of scare me, mostly because of the “burned to a crisp” aspect. Then there’s the sand, the people, the cold water.

It went surprisingly well. Kate did seem to enjoy the sand, though not as much as I would have thought she would – though that may be because I wouldn’t let her to do the fun things, like eat the driftwood and rocks. We had some pails and shovels and she seemed to like that. She had the most fun, I think, climbing onto and off of my darn chair. We went all the way to the beach so she could play with a chair?

I did walk Kate over to where the waves were breaking, and she watched them suspiciously, nervously. Then one little wave crept up to her feet. She fell backwards, landing on her bum, then threw her hands in the air and cried. And cried. I stood her back up, and she still cried, shaking her arms for emphasis. So, does not like ocean waves. It was pretty cold – I certainly wasn’t going to go swimming.

It was a good day, for sure, a good outing with the toddler, but not exactly relaxing either. It’s not like I could read, as I had to make sure Kate wasn’t trying to eat something or walk onto someone else’s blanket. You can occupy them for only so long with their cool toys, next time you glance over she’s taking off again. Thankfully the sand slowed her down considerably! She actually didn’t walk around much for the first hour, but unfortunately for me she figured out how to walk on the sand by the end of the day.

I put SPF 50 on both of us – I did it once before we left the house, more on her when we arrived at the beach, and then put more on both of us halfway through. She looks fine, I’m a little pink. She definitely got some of her daddy’s skin tone – there is some Native blood in him, he tends to tan nicely. Unlike me, who wavers between Ghost and Lobster.

Several times in the past few weeks, feeling nostalgic, I attempted to lay down on the futon with Kate in my arms. We used to sleep on said futon mattress, and it is still located in her room, directly beside her bed. But she would have none of it. Even tired and sleepy from nursing, content with her paci in her mouth, she still immediately flips over and pushes to her knees and then her feet, rushing off in a very toddler excitement, not really sure what she is doing or why. So frustrating. That’s why I finally had to move her to her crib, this inability to lay still and settle. I don’t really know when it happened, sometime between 8 months and 11 months. I remember (too vividly) when it just became too much for me, when she would attempt to crawl on top of me for an hour straight in the middle of the night, me struggling to remain calm and patient, repeatedly laying her back down, and then sobbing with frustration. Now I just put her in her crib. With no alternatives she lays down and goes to sleep without much fuss. In fact there are days when she’s fidgeting around in her crib for half an hour or more, babbling quietly and peeking over the side of the crib, when I realize that my presence is hindering not helping. I leave the room and she cries for a minute or two and then falls soundly asleep. (I discovered that by accident, when I had to take a break from her room for my own mental health after she toddled laps around her crib and alternated giggling while throwing her pacis out of the crib and then bawling when she realized she no longer had any pacis. I got up and left, frazzled as all hell, and she astounded me by falling asleep only minutes later.)

In a way it’s kind of ideal. It wasn’t easy by any means, but she transitioned from our bed to her room to her crib on her own time, when it was clear that she needed to. It just happened – not by itself, it still took time and effort to make the adjustment, but it was certainly easier than I expected it to be.

But. I still miss her terribly. Not quite as terribly as I did at first – her transition to the crib was much harder on me than it was on her – but still it aches. I enjoy having my own space in bed, being able to roll over and rustle without worrying about waking her up, and being able to read at leisure in bed (or type, as I am doing presently). What bothers me most, though, is that it seems to have been an all-or-nothing deal. When she was in our bed she needed me next to her at all times, and she needed to nurse all night long. Now that she’s in her crib she needs her space to flop around and grab her pacis and put herself to sleep. I can’t have a little of both. It makes sense logically: once you get used to going to sleep a certain way you rather like to do it the same way all the time. But there are days when I just want to hold her. I want to press my lips against her forehead and curl my body around hers the way I did when she was little, when she clutched me at night like a large mama security-blanket. It was tough being there 24/7, but it was so very special to me.

It’s true, what they say – as a parent you spend so much time wishing for things to move forward, then when they do you wish you hadn’t been so hasty. I wanted so much for her to sleep better at night, and yes I am absolutely thrilled that she is indeed sleeping better. But I think what I really wanted is more just the reassurance that some day she would sleep better. I remember feeling so panicked that she would be like that forever, waking up every 2 hours for the next 3 years. I worried that it was unfixable, a permanent problem. I worried that I had done something terribly wrong. Now? Now I look back and realize I didn’t. I did what was best for her and for me, and it worked out just fine. Hindsight, right?

I take solace in the thought that we will hopefully have another little one in the future. That’s what keeps me from hyperventilating when I realize Kate is growing up so darn fast. It’s not that I don’t enjoy who she is now – I do, in so many ways – I just wish I could have all of it at will: the newborn snuggles and little baby coos along with the funny, active toddler I have now. I need a little time machine so I can zip around at will to my favorite moments, reliving them over and over. I suppose that’s what journaling is supposed to do… but it’s not quite the same as experiencing it, needless to say.

When I graduated from high school there was of course the big question: what to DO with my life? It’s the quintessential high school graduate dilemma. I ended up choosing computers, something that I had a passion for and seemed to have many good options for careers down the line. I got myself a Bachelors degree in Computer Information Systems.

And then I immigrated to the United States. If you know anything about immigration, you know that you’re not allowed to work for a good long period while they process your (multiple, quadruplicate, ad-nauseum) paperwork and finally provide you with a permanent resident card. And then we were going to have babies! Soon! It wouldn’t be worth it to get a job only to quit in a few months. (Pause a moment for a good laugh.) Plus by that point it had been over a year since I graduated, thousands of miles away from a Canadian college, and in computer speak I was already outdated. Plus computer work tends to be very… intense. Computer systems are fickle things. Suddenly computer programming wasn’t looking like such a great idea.

I couldn’t have known back in 2000 where my life would lead. It wasn’t until after we got married, until the infertility, the IVF, the pregnancies and births, that I found this passion. It’s not as if I grew up as the girl who loved babies and children – I actually wasn’t sure I ever wanted children at all, kids just weren’t my thing (pets were, however – I clearly had a very strong maternal side). I’m kind of sad I wasted 4 years on a degree I will never use, but I guess that’s the risk you take when you go to college so young. It was a learning experience, and I certainly love school, and it gave me a degree to lean back on if I ever need to, but still. I just don’t see me ever doing that. My heart isn’t in it anymore – hasn’t been for a very long time.

I’ve been doing a lot of hard thinking this past week, thinking about passions and priorities and possibilities. I started looking at alternatives to being a birth doula, like becoming a lactation consultant. But the more I think on it the more I realize that I can’t ignore this drive I have simply because there is an obstacle. Not having my parents nearby for childcare is unfortunate and does make things harder. But who am I to give up at that? Sometimes you need to fight for what you want. Life doesn’t serve you perfection on a platter. I think I spent a lot of time in prior years waiting for a career to fall into my lap, waiting for that perfect job to come along and bite me on the ass. Well that’s not how my life works. I had to bust my ass to get pregnant and bring home a child – but I did it, because it was worth it, because I was passionate about it. I spent remarkably little time (for me) complaining about how I couldn’t do it, I just did it. It may have been one of the first times in my life that when push came to shove I dug into my strength and just did it. (The first was probably dating and marrying my husband: 3000 miles, different countries, I was in college still, and there’s a 16 year age difference. Most everyone thought I was nuts and that was a whole lot of obstacles, but I was stubborn and determined and it was most certainly worth it.)

Not that pursuing a career is the same as getting married or doing IVF, but sometimes I need to remind myself that the things worth doing take determination and strength to accomplish. So here it is. I have found something that I believe is worth my time and energy, worth fighting for. There is a way to find childcare, and I will find it.

I am also going to be starting to take Biology classes at the local college come this fall. We talked about me taking a class last year but of course I hemmed and hawed and didn’t do it. It’s going to cost some, but it’s clear that all of my interests lie in Biology. I will need a degree in order to do pretty much anything I want to do in the future. It’s easy to talk about “the future” when it’s some far-away object, but I have to start taking steps now.

Since her birthday Kate has started pointing at everything. I had been chatting with a friend about how her son was pointing at things and I mentioned that Kate wasn’t. Of course a day or two later she just started doing it. Now every time we pick her up she points to the ceiling and says some nonsensical toddler word like, “Jish,” or “Da.” And then she starts pointing at anything she sees. A picture! The TV! The fan! The cat!

The sounds she make continues to evolve, though no more actual words have emerged… it just sounds more like english words. She is always babbling toddler-ese sentences that are pure gibberish, but we answer her in english. “Oh yes, that’s the cat! He’s a good kitty.” (Usually followed by “Gentle… GENTLE!” and sometimes “Do not step on the kitty!”)

A lot of the new things she’s doing are little mannerisms that are difficult to describe. Like she’s doing this thing where she lowers her chin to her chest and tilts her head into her shoulder, sometimes while pointing at something or someone, often whispering something like, “Dat… dat…. dat…” It’s just so funny looking, kind of coy and quizzical and silly-like. I have no idea what it means, if it means anything at all.

She also has this new silly laugh – mouth wide open, breathing quickly in and out for a breathy “ha ha ha.” She does it all the time now. Yesterday while she was eating dinner Den got the video camera out and managed to capture a lot of the silly laugh, along with her hilarious attempts at feeding herself yogurt using a spoon – a process she apparently found terrifically exciting and absolutely hysterical.

Her obsession with pushing things around has expanded from push-toys and objects with wheels (strollers, the highchair) to random furniture pieces. Today at dinner I went to sit down and just as I was lowering my butt Kate pushed the chair right out from under me and across the room. I’m lucky I didn’t fall right on my ass, but I grabbed the table and saved myself (while Den laughed). The other day I saw her flip our coffee table right over (it’s a light one). Now I understood that pushing things is fun for toddlers. The moving furniture was a little unexpected, but flipping things over? That caught me entirely off-guard. This takes baby-proofing to a whole new level.

Speaking of baby-proofing, it’s like as soon as I think we have everything out of her reach she sprouts up again and we have to rush to move things. I was watching her little fingers reaching up to grab the remote controls off the TV stand, which previously was too tall for her, and said, “Oh shit.” It’s clear that she’s been growing inches recently. When she started walking at 9 months she could just walk under our kitchen table, though soon after she was hitting the top of her head. Now the bar hits her in the forehead, she has to duck 3-4 inches to get under. And even when I just look at her walking around in her diaper and shirt I can’t get over how long her legs look now. Kate has always been petite and on the skinny side, but now she looks so leggy!

My mom discovered her thighs are ticklish. I can get great squeals of laughter from her by squeezing them. Easy to do, since they – along with so much of her body – is so squeezable!

Having a futon on the floor in the house is such a fantastic thing. Not only does it let me crash in her room when I need to (ie, when she doesn’t want me to leave but I’m just exhausted), but it makes a most excellent play mat. Kate and I regularly go into her room to read books and then have big tickle-wrestle fights on the mattress. She loves to crawl on me and I will tackle her, roll her over, nom her with kisses, hold her in the air, and so on. We just have so much fun! I know I can do that on the carpet in the living room, too, but you know… it’s easier on my back. (Am I getting old? What?)

Books have always been a favorite of Kate’s, she loves flipping through them and touching the pictures, but just these last few days she’s realized that mom and dad do stuff with books. I’ve always let her explore books at her own pace, she never had any patience for just listening as I read, she was way too hands-on for that. But now? She wants me to read it to her. She’ll even sit on my lap after handing me the book, waiting. Of course her attention span is still very short, to the point where I often don’t even make it through one of her board books before she’s grabbing another book and giving it to me. But she keeps wanting more! If I finish a book and close it she grabs it from me and shoves it back in my hands expectantly. Or she’ll reach over to grab a different one and give to me. It’s now her trick to getting my attention when I’m doing something else: she walks over and shoves a book at me. It’s so fun watching her interest in books grow! She’s now enjoying the Sandra Boynton books we have, which previously were not interesting enough for her. But I find that they’re short enough with cute pictures to keep her attention the whole way through (except Birthday Monsters which is a SUPER cute story but too long for her right now). She also found some lift-the-flap books on her bookshelf. Instead of trying to tear the flap out she’s actually lifting the flap and putting it back down, staring at the pictures quizzically. It’s quite cute how she is very precise about pushing the flap ALL the way up, and then pushing it all the way down and patting it into place.

Lucky is not typically a term we use to describe ourselves with. We are many things – lucky is not one of them. And yet so many times throughout the day we look at Kate and say, “Wow… we got so lucky.”

She is just such a fantastic, happy kid. Everyone that we see says it – which we wouldn’t really take note of, except for the expressions of surprise on their faces. “Wow! She’s so HAPPY!” “I don’t think I’ve ever seen her upset!” “Is she always so smiley?” Well… in general, yes! If she’s not in a good mood I know something is most definitely wrong – usually tired, a poopy diaper, or hungry. Sometimes her teeth, but she doesn’t let that slow her down during the day.

Yesterday we went to her friend Dominic’s birthday party. When we got there several kids were playing at the sand and water table, and Kate immediately beelined for them. She basically spent the next five hours running around with the other kids, climbing off and on toys, splashing in the water, and sitting on random peoples’ laps. We were always looking around going, “Uhh, where’s our kid?” only to find her calmly sitting on someone’s lap, watching the festivities. (Which I found a little weird for her – she loves people but doesn’t usually like to be held by them, she wants down to run around.) There was a little while she wanted to be held by Den and I and she was getting fussy and, yep, massive poopy dipe.

This morning we went out for breakfast and Kate was just the best behaved 1-year-old you could possibly imagine. She walked around a little bit, flirting with the older patrons who thought she was the cutest thing ever. She played with my straw for a remarkably long stretch of time. Then when our food came we put her in her highchair where she proceeded to eat nearly as much as I did. Fruit, eggs, sausage, she dug right in. And so we all ate in remarkable peace and quiet, Den and I with both hands. Kate ate and drank from her sippy and didn’t even throw anything onto the floor. I never thought eating with a toddler would in some ways be more relaxing than eating while juggling a small baby! After our meal we got her all cleaned up and strapped her into her carseat so she could happily hum in the backseat on the way home. Once home I nursed her and put her down for a nap.

Yesterday at the party she started saying “bye-bye!” She’s been waving for a month or two now, but in the past few days she’s really starting mimicking sounds. So she was waving at everyone saying, “buh-buh-buh-buh.” “Say bye-bye, Kate!” “Buh-bah!” And then she would look extremely pleased with herself and clap. LOL Adorable! She’s most definitely saying “Mama” now, and again looks pleased as punch when she does it and I respond accordingly. (“Mamama.” “Yes, baby?” “Mama! [grin]”)

She’s also climbing everything. She’s started pushing over her toys in the living room – as well as random other objects around the house, like trash cans – and climbing on top of them. At the party yesterday she climbed into her friend’s new car and then climbed up onto the seat and stood up! Yikes. I think she’s going to end up taking a few tumbles soon. Good thing my mom got her a toddler slide, something appropriate for her to climb on!

I never thought having a toddler would be so much fun!