Where'd my baby go?

I was looking at a picture of RC tonight. It wasn't her. In that picture, there's a little girl. The posture, the stance, the expression - there's no baby. It's amazing and a little sad.

It has been a crazy month. She's grown and changed so much lately.

She puts on and takes off her shoes with ease. She has slightly better than a 50% hit ratio getting them on the right feet.

She's getting much better at feeding herself with a fork and spoon. Scooping and stabbing seems to be her biggest problems. She does pretty well getting the utensil to her mouth without spilling.

She will gladly help you put things away or fetch things for you. She loves to clean up water that she spills on the tile (so no one will slip). She says "keen up" when she's putting away toys or wiping up spills.

"Fissit" (Fix it!) and "Hep" (Help) are very popular. If her feet are in the wrong position in her shoes, or the straps come undone she asks for them to be fixed. She asks for help eating when she can't get it right quickly enough.

She understands what an "Owie" is. She is getting better at leaving bandages on. She is showing signs of scarring as easily as her daddy so we are quick to respond with neosporin and band-aids when she gets a scrape. She likes wearing "Elnyo", "Tookie" and "BiBird" on her owies to help them feel better. She also understands that mommy's toe has a bad owie right now and she needs to be careful of it. When she falls, she doesn't really cry. She gets up and asks me to "tissit" and then goes on about her business. I get pretty specific locations on what to kiss, too.

We are about 75% mommy and daddy instead of mama and dada.

Her comfort objects seem to be her books. She won't go to sleep (nap or night time) until she has a book. When she wakes up in the morning, she immediately wants to go get a book. She usually doesn't want us to read them to her. Sometimes she'll read them to herself or to us. Other times, they are just there.

She's fascinated by body parts and loves to name things.

She talks a lot, but still mostly single words. She strung together her first 3 words today - "mommy paypa cray" (me, paper, crayon) - wanting me to take the paper off of the crayon she was using. We don't get many 2 word strings, though. She still babble strings of things at us, but usually we just understand her name at the beginning. At the same time, she has a vocabulary over 125 words (as of a month ago) so we're not worried about her development. I guess she's busy storing words instead of putting them together. She communicates really well for not using multiple word strings. She even has a few Japanese words in her vocabulary and "gato" (arrigatou) is a sure winner for anyone she talks to here.

She does pretty well with "peeees" "tayntoo" and "sowwy" in the appropriate places. We've used sorry a lot as she really enjoys hitting the cats and pulling tails and we always make her apologize for it. She still confuses please and thank you, but does use them.

Overall, though, she is doing better with the cats. Minuit will sometimes come to her for attention and RC will pet her back. She loves to give "tweats" to Minuit and Preta. They'll actually eat out of her hands most days and that's always good for a laugh. She can identify Max and Spot pretty reliably. She has a lot of trouble distinguishing Minuit from Preta, though. I think she's vaguely aware that one of them doesn't have a tail to grab, but since we don't see Julia very much she's not had much opportunity with her name.

She loves to imitate me putting on "doshun". I give her fake squirts of my lotion (though I have to throw in a *tiny* real one now and then since Aunt Fyoire gave her some while she visited) and she rubs it on her hands, feet, arms, legs and sometimes face.

She loves to hear us sing "AB"Cs and "twintle" Twinkle Little Star. She also sometimes asks for "bewwa" (part of Twinkle Twinkle in Latin). She hasn't really identified any letters, though. She can pick out the number 8 and sometimes 2 and 3. I think she knows the colors red, blue and maybe yellow.

She is fascinated by "buCKles" and loves to fasten them. She will strap herself into her booster chair and her car seat. She has identified that the cats have buckles on their collars and loves to play with them (usually pulling the collar without regard to the cat she's choking).

She has mastered drinking out of an open cup and that is her favored method. She loves her Elmo mug and her Blue's Clues cup. When she's done drinking, she'll dump it into the nearest container so we have to keep an eye on her. If she wants more than the sip we offered, she'll quickly ask for "moe". That goes for just about anything.

She loves to play with her tea set. Usually this involves handing us a tea cup, letting us take a sip, then taking it away while politely inquiring (ordering) "moe". Repeat...for a LONG time. Sometimes we can distract her with the tea pot song. She's good at tipping over...all the way over.

Her favorite part of swimming is the "fwoaties". Once she's in the floaties, she doesn't really like for me to hold on to her anymore. I can reach out and help her steer occasionally, but she likes to just float and kick and see where she ends up.

She had a great visit with Grandma G (meemaw), Grandpa G (paypaw), Gamma Ree (ree), her aunt and Pixie (pitsie). She talks about them still on a near daily basis...especially Pixie (sorry grandparents).

She's still nursing about 4 times a day. At this point, I am becoming convinced that she may nurse until she's in school... I swing back on forth on my feelings about this. Some days, I'm almost ready to wean. Others, she reaches up to caress my chin or pull me down to wrap an arm around me while she's latched and I can't imagine giving up those moments.

Tonight at dinner, she didn't like something she ate so she grabbed her tongue and smeared the contents of it across her face. Almost.died.trying.not.to.laugh.

She climbs. Everything. She also loves to hang from her arms and swing - from our hands, the kitchen table, the shelf in her closet. She started that at the playplace outside of B&N in Chandler mall and hasn't stopped.

She plays ball with Chrys. She loves to "woll" it to him and have him roll it back. She's getting really good at distance and some accuracy. Occasionally, she tries to play with the cats, but they aren't really interested.

She loves wind in her hair. Whether it's from a fan or outside, gentle breeze or strong wind on a boat doesn't seem to matter. She adores it all. It's to the point that we have to have the fan on in the office and if it's not, she asks for it. She also points them out everywhere we go.

We took her to see Star Wars 3. She slept through a good part of it. At the beginning, all of the ships flew by and she just said "ooooooooooo" like a good little geek. Chrys has apparently also gotten her interested in Star Trek and she has a similar reaction to the appearance of Enterprise or Voyager.

Ok...I'm sure there's more, but I'll have to think about it for a while longer. That gets me mostly caught up, though. Man, a lot happens in a month.