The Big Girl

Dear Peanut,

I thought I wasn't going to write you another letter until you were 18 months old, but I simply had to. You turned 15 months old today and I really need to remember what a fabulous age this is. You are becoming your own little girl more and more everyday. Your personality is coming out and you now have distinct likes and dislikes and mood swings and belly laughter and an appreciation for the world around you more than ever before. There are so many things about who you are today that I don't ever want to forget so I must document them. I am not nearly as organized as I was during your monthly letters so I am going to go at this bullet style and then follow up with a few pics and call it a day. Sound good?

• There is just no way to try and categorize you as a baby anymore. You are SO in the realm of toddler. The other day your brother referred to you as his baby sister and even a perfect stranger told him, "She's not a baby anymore..." No more denying it. My "baby" is gone. But I'm okay with that because each day is better than the last where you're concerned.
• You started walking for real the day I posted about you walking with your new shoes. Prior to that you would walk between people if prompted but from that day forward, no more crawling. At all. You are upright, all the time. Crawling is so last month!
• I simply cannot get over how much you talk. I know I have mentioned it on here before and I have no real comparison given that your brother had speech issues from a young age, but DAMN!! You talk all the time. Real words. I started counting how many words you had the other day so I knew for your doctors appt and I stopped counting at 35. That's insane. Not all of them are pronounced perfectly, but they work. You are a talker. You are following in your Mommy's footsteps in that vain my daughter...
• Speaking of that, you call your brother "bruh-dah" and I think it's the cutest thing ever. You adore him. Except for when you don't, but mostly you love, love, love him. The other day he was gone for most of the day and you walked around the house calling for him. When he finally got home you squealed with such excitement and yelled "bruh-duh! Heyo bruh-duh!!" So effing sweet...
• Your growing. Specifically your feet. About a month ago I bought you a new pair of shoes in a size 4. The week before that (literally one week) you had measured a 3 1/2 so I bought you a pair of those. Then just last week I couldn't stuff your little feet into the 4's. So I went out, again, and got you measured and bought you some new 4/5's. You are officially a 4 1/2. Not huge, but again that is a full size growth in like 6 weeks. Again, your brother wore the same size shoes each time for like a year. He only wears an 8 now and he's four years old. So no experience with this whole fast growing thing. It wears me out a little bit. Good thing I like buying you shoes.
• Now that you're walking you have to be carrying something around at all times. You think it is just too cool to be able to move AND carry your toys, so there is always at least one toy in each hand. Your favorite thing to carry, by FAR, is your brother's straw cup. If I fill it with water, you will drink out of it. And then take another drink...cause, you know, it's fun...and then realize that you have WAY too much water in your mouth so you spit it out. Rinse and repeat. I have learned to just give you an empty cup. That seems to make you happy.
• You still only have the 6 teeth but dear GOD...you have to be teething. Your hands are in your mouth constantly. And I swear you're going to get more than just the 6 teeth...
• Even though you only have 6 teeth you have NO problem eating pretty much anything I put in front of you. You could gum a steak if I would give it to you. The other night you scarfed an entire chicken apple sausage. You can still swallow and eat things your brother refuses to even touch.
• However. You are not the magical eater you once were. You know have cravings and grudges and moods. What you will one day scarf with pure unabandoned joy, the next day you will spit out at me like I have given you poison. Then the next day? Somehow fabulous again. I now have to show you the food item before trying to give it to you and you either say "no," or "nom." We proceed accordingly.
• On that note, I am no longer allowed to simply put food on your tray. If I do so, you will just immediately take your hands and wipe it all clean onto the floor. No thank you. What you prefer (actually insist) is that I put your food onto a fork and hand you the fork. You then put the fork into your own mouth and hand it back to me. Then I am allowed to put another item onto your fork (after properly checking with your whims first) and hand it to you. We proceed like this through the entire meal. If I am trying to eat my own meal at the same time? One of us is usually unsuccessful. I give you one guess on the one who goes hungry.
• You wave at everything. The cats. Your Gigi. You wave goodbye to me when you leave a room. But you absolutely refuse to wave to someone you don't know, or if I happen to ask you to wave to someone. That gets refused. But by far the cutest wave happens at the end of the night when I put you in your crib and tell you goodnight. You wave night night to me. You have your binky in your mouth so you smile around it and wave. And my heart melts. Every single night.
• You are happy about 90% of the time. Seriously a totally happy little girl. Unless something doesn't go your way. Example: Your brother takes the toy back that you have just stolen from him. You have to have your diaper changed when you are in the middle of something MUCH more important. Someone DARES to shut the baby gates on you when you are high tailing it into said room illegally. Someone has the nerve to not understand your pointing and grunting communication technique and offers you something different than what you actually want. Or god forbid we are sitting up on a bed or couch or something that you can't get up onto and therefore feel left out. If any of the above scenarios occur you scream like...well like a little girl. Loud and high pitched. The length of your scream depends on how serious you deem the infraction against you. You have been known to let out just a high pitched scream and then to move on literally the next second, but you have also been known to cry for over a half an hour if you're really good and pissed.
• Okay Mommy has gotten a little out of control with the bullet points. It's clear that I think you're the cutest thing in the universe right now and I want to just put a little bubble around it and capture every moment in my memory so I never forget. But for now we'll just do a few pics and call it a night.

Mommy still isn't sure what to do about your hair. I put it up every day in either one pony tail on top of your head, or pig tails. And if I didn't? Here's what it would look like all the time:

Here you are practicing walking. This was all you wanted to do on our "staycation" a few weekends ago. There was a little slope/ramp thing and you just went up and down trying to master the balance it took...
Now that you can walk you think you should be able to drag the rest of us around with you. Here you are trying to convince your Gramps that you are not nearly as entertained by snakes as your brother.
You have NO fear. None. You see your brother going up and down that slide and you want to be a part of it too. You go up to pretty much anyone and bat your eyelashes and point to the slide like, "Can't you possibly just put me up there just this one time? Pretty please?" And then when you find a sucker to agree, you immediately demand that they repeat the process over and over and over and over...until they are ready to pass out.
This is pretty much all I see of you these days. Walking away from me ready to explore the world...a toy in your hand and another on the floor that you got sick of carrying.
Keep walking my little girl. I will be following and supporting you from every angle. I love you more than words will ever be able to express. Happy 15 months old baby.

PS--This is my 350th post! Holy crap, that's a lot of blogging!