Dear Emma,
Another day, another milestone — today you are 18 months old! Pretty soon we’ll have to stop counting in months and start counting in years since at some point, I suppose months start requiring too much mental math. (My calculator tells me that I am 430 months old.)
One of your dad’s coworkers told him last year that once your kid turns 1, life sort of goes back to normal and it is amazing how true that has been for us. For the first year of your life, each month felt like a Really. Big. Deal. and I would congratulate both of us for making it through. But if I didn’t have a calendar, I would swear that your birthday and Halloween and Christmas were all only a few weeks ago. Time has started to fly. You no longer seem like someone new. You are simply, awesomely, another member of our family.
So what’s going on in your world these days? Well, you love to dance. You love to read. You love your shoes, and your hat, and your jacket. You love to point out the moon and the stars and birds and airplanes and anything else in the sky. And you are one of the most expressive kids I’ve ever seen! You ooh and you ahh, you smile and frown, your eyes narrow when you concentrate and go wide with surprise or amazement.
You are friendly to those you know, and friendly to those you don’t — from a distance. At Christmas, for instance, you chose to admire Santa from afar, smiling and pointing and waving from 10 or 20 feet away but crying when you got too close.
(Oddly, you loved the giant bear and snowman that were walking around and gave them each an umprompted hug. I don’t get it, but I trust it makes sense inside your head.)
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You’ve started to practice using a spoon and fork and drinking from a straw cup. These are all challenging in their own ways, whether it’s trying to spoon yogurt from the cup into your mouth, spearing a piece of broccoli with your fork, or remembering that a straw cup works exactly opposite of your sippy cup — the higher you raise it, the LESS you can drink. You are determined though, and rarely give up without a fight. (Or a mess.)
You’re also finally learning how to descend stairs properly — or at least in a manner more befitting to someone whose legs are barely longer than each stair is high. After months of trying to walk down them facing forward like an adult, you now understand that you need to turn around and scoot down them on your knees. This knowledge, however, is only a consolation prize since you have more than made up for your safer stair techniques by adding a number of death-defying new stunts to your repertoire.
You can now climb onto our couch, our bed, my rotating office chair, the rocking chairs in front of the daycare, your wagon…and probably a lot of other things I haven’t figured out yet. A few nights ago, Dad and I looked over to see you moments away from standing up on top of one of your riding toys — you know, the ones with the wheels that can roll right out from under you without warning?? And the night before that, we caught you perched precariously on the edge of the chair with your booster seat, trying to sit yourself down for dinner while our backs were turned.
And you are fast now — that, and surprisingly nimble for someone who hasn’t even been able to walk for a full 6 months. Last night when I told you it was bath time, you took off at practically a run from the living room into the foyer, around the corner and down the hall towards the bathroom, arms flailing to keep your balance. You do this basically whenever you hear the word “bath,” but it makes me giggle every single time.
Your enthusiasm for the mundane — baths, putting clothes in the washer, unloading the dishwasher — is matched only by your excitement about life in general. Every day is new! And look at that! And that! And while I doubt you will enjoy laundry quite this much when you are a teenager, I hope you never lose that special ability you have here and now, as a child, to see joy in everything.
Love,
Mama
Mimsie says
Enjoyed the update. She is a cutie!
Mom says
Lovely — your post, your daughter, and YOU!! I love you!