Happy Birthday Baby Girl!

I've decided that toddler and baby are not mutually exclusive terms. Baby can refer to newborn, infant or toddler. So even though Lucy has left infanthood behind, can toddle and is a year old, she can still be considered a baby. That's my theory and I'm sticking to it :-)

Dear Lucy,

I can not believe you are a year old. These past 12 months have gone by so fast but funnily enough, it is sometimes hard to remember what my life was like before you were in it. You are so much a part of our family now that it seems like it has always been that way.

You are straddling two worlds. You are a baby. You still love to nurse and cuddle. You don't always have to nurse to sleep anymore but if you aren't nursing, you want to be snuggled up right next to me or your dad, sometimes even flopped across our chests. You still love to be worn. You'll go for walks all snug on my back and point out the flowers and birds you see, then I feel your head plop against me as you fall asleep.

But every day I see a little girl emerging. You love your baby doll and "Mr Puppy." You will pick them up and pat their backs, give them a hug and a kiss then hand them to me to take care of for a minute before demanding them back. You'll even lay them down and cover them up with little blankets.

You are becoming much less wary of others and might even smile at someone you meet at church or the grocery store although if they talk to you, you get all shy, hide your face in my shoulder, and pat my back as if to reaassure yourself that I've got you, then you turn and smile at them.

You are about 21 lbs (according to the bathroom scale) and 20 of those are personality. You have a million facial expressions. You have a great sense of humor. You know doing things "wrong" is funny - you still say "dada" when I ask you to say "mama" and if dad asks you for a kiss, you will find something else to kiss (the cat or me) and then laugh and laugh. You can also point out people and will do it wrong on purpose. If you know you have the right answer, you smile and look proud of yourself but if you know you have the wrong answer, you'll look at us and laugh and keep pointing at different wrong things while laughing. Finally I will give you a sad face and you will point to right person. You also like to tickle us with any fuzzy thing (kleenex, lint, etc) you find lying around.

You really like helping daddy feed the cat and making sure grandpa and bubbie's puppy is fed. If Kip whines, you will point to the food storage bin then the bowl over and over again until someone feeds him (or we leave the kitchen if it isn't his meal time :-) And if we give one of them food but they aren't hungry, you get upset. We can sometimes tell you that they are "all done" and you'll be okay with that, but other times you keep pointing at the bowl until they at least try one bite of food. I think you are just like me, you know what is supposed to happen and you don't like when it doesn't work the way you are expecting.

You say two words (mama and dada) and five signs (choo-choo, hi/bye, milk, all done and just this week added more). We've been doing "more" for months now but it wasn't until one of your stories had the phrase "more, more, more" that you finally starting doing it. Within 24 hrs, you learned to apply more to food, books and songs.



But sometimes you don't feel like signing, you feel like screaming. Mostly when you know that we are perfectly aware of what you want but have said no. You try pointing or signing again but then you get mad. For your future's sake, I stay firm but inside I am laughing so hard because your mad face is just so darn cute.

You actually pick up things really fast from books, you learned to clap and do "so big" from books, we never even tried either of those with you, you just started all on your own a couple days after we got a book that had picture of babies doing those. And I have no idea where you learned this from but if you are sitting somewhere and we say "relax", you lean back and rest your head and arms.

For stats you are xxlbs, and xx inches (to be updated after check-up on Wednesday :-) You are long and lean. You are wearing both 12 and 18 month clothes and your hair is almost long enough for a teeny tiny pony tail (I keep trying but it needs to be just a smidgen longer). You are so pretty, both inside and out. I can't wait to experience the next year with you.!