Fast post, because I’m still very sick and want to get to bed.

– Tooth #9 is making an appearance. Lower left first molar.

– Colors! She will point to a whole bunch of things of the same color.

– Drawing. She will draw if you give her paper and markers. She will even draw mostly on the paper. Other popular media (mediums?) include her face, her mouth, her hands, her clothing, and anyone within reach.

– Caps! Her latest favorite game is to put caps or lids on things. I need to obtain more containers that have lids. If any of my readers have tang containers, coffee cans, or anything else with an easy to put on and take off lid, I’d love to take it off your hands.

Okay. Bed for me. She’s on the mend from her cold but I’m still very sick.

– Tooth number 8 is pushing its way out, and it’s a doozy. Lower left first molar, and her gums look terrible. Red and purple and very swollen, with a little ridge of tooth peeking out.

– When you ask her, “Where’s Josephine?” she will get a big grin and point to herself! I also showed her a picture of herself and she pointed to her picture and then to herself. Same with the mirror! She’s definitely getting a concept of “me” which, at least to me, implies that she’s also developing some sense of “not me.” Sometimes when she wants something I have, she will point to it and then to herself, as if to say, “that is for me!”

– She’ll sometimes point out “Mama” and “Daddy” in pictures. But more often, if you ask her to point us out, she’ll point to herself. She is very excited to point to herself :).

– Running away! She loves to run and explore and is definitely testing her boundaries when it comes to independence.

– She has started pointing at things and then clapping when she wants them. She’s pretty good at communicating even though she doesn’t have many words!

– Learning how to use a water fountain. She is figuring out how to drink in a variety of ways, from cups to baths (yuck!) to water fountains.

– new word: bye bye! She will say bye bye to her toys when she puts them down, to people when they leave, or it seems like whenever she’s leaving something behind. This includes when she is done with her food. She will throw it on the floor and shout, “bye! Bye bye bye!” As if she could banish it.

– Her teachers have started calling her their classroom greeter. Anyone that walks into the room is greeted with a cheery, “Hi!” And seen off with a, “Bye bye!” And a grin.

– I have volunteered to be a classroom parent. It’s intimidating but if I want to get involved with her schooling I might as well do it now.

– She has started giving the best hugs. She will wrap her arms around your neck as only a child can do, and lean her cheek against your shoulder or cheek. It melts my heart every time.

– She now insists on walking out of school by herself. I let her walk to the door, but still insist on carrying her to the car.

– tooth number 7 arrived this morning, and it was a rough one. Lower left lateral incisor.

– Gentle touch: she definitely knows what gentle is. If she’s patting you and getting too rough, you can tell her to be gentle and she’ll immediately start stroking instead of patting, then resume her patting with less vigor. She usually gets excited again pretty quickly and you have to tell her to be gentle again but it’s not too bad.

– this one is all mine: I’ve finally gotten back to the gym! I went yesterday and it felt great. I’m looking forward to having regular exercise again that isn’t chasing her around.

Writing these updates on my phone is hard. I left my iPad at work.

Sorry I missed last week. Lots is happening!

– Running. She can now run (sorta). She only gets a few steps before her legs don’t move fast enough and she faceplants, but it almost never matters to her. She gets right up and starts running again!

– Her “baby.” At school, every baby has their own doll, which they call their “babies.” J will go and pick up her baby, rock it, sing to it, and then lay it face down on the ground and start patting it on the back. That’s how they put her down for naptime. Now, if you tell her to find her baby and say night night, that’s what she’ll do. She loves it.

– Climbing. She loves to climb everything, anything! The sofa, the chair, mom, dad, into the tub, up on to the table, anything she can! It seems like every week we have to watch her more closely instead of less.

– Gentle touch. She’s gotten very good at being gentle. She almost never grabs the cats fur or ears. When they let her, she will pat them gently and try to give them a hug. She tried to pick up Chen once, which didn’t work so well, but no one was hurt.

– Argh there’s so much more! It’s time for me to start keeping a list.

Small steps towards big things this week.

She’s getting frustrated at her inability to communicate. The other night during dinner she kept putting her hand on top of her head, but I could not for the life of me figure out what it was supposed to mean. I eventually decided it must mean “more” because every time she would pick up a frozen pea and eat it, then look at me and grunt and put her hand on her head. She did it 4 or 5 times. Eventually I got her some more peas (there weren’t a lot on her tray) and she stopped doing it. Whether she was distracted by new peas or I was able to get her what she wanted, it’s hard to say.

She’s been nursing a whole bunch in the evenings before bed, to the point where I have been supplementing with some frozen milk. Sometimes she won’t want the bottle but I’ve clearly got no milk left for her, and those nights involve some frustration for both of us! I asked them to start giving her more milk at school and that seems to have helped. By 18 months she should be getting (approximately, of course) about half her calories from milk and half from solids. Increasing milk intake at school from 6-8oz to 8-10oz has helped considerably.

Tonight I tried something new and offered dinner before her home-from-school snuggle session. Bedtime was pretty fast and easy, so I might start trying solids before nursing more regularly.

Separate sleeping is also going pretty well. Some nights are better than others, but on average she’s sleeping for about 3-4 hours between wakings, and going back down very easily (within 15-20 minutes). I’ve found that I’m sleeping much less, partly because now I’m waking up a couple times a night and partly (okay, mostly) because I’m staying up later than her and getting up earlier, whereas before I was tied to sleeping on her schedule. In the mornings, this means a lot more sleep for her because I can get ready while she’s still in the crib. Not sure if it’s related but her naps are lasting about 60-90 minutes instead of 45-60. It makes everyone happier. Oh! And weekend naptimes are SO PRODUCTIVE now. This coming weekend, Papa T. is going to start trying to put her down for second nap.

That’s all I can think of :(.

Okay, so I keep missing Milestone Monday, and I only chose it for its alliterative properties. Since J was born on a Tuesday, that means I’m always a day shy of the next week. So I missed it, so I’ve decided to start writing updates on Tuesdays, which are the day she was born anyway. So here we are at 56 weeks, which would have been 55 weeks yesterday. Whee!

– She’s started trying to use objects the way they were intended. She will hold a phone up to her face and say, “Hi!” She will hold a sock up to her foot and look at me as if to say, “like this, mom?” She will try to put hats on her head and my sunglasses on her face.

– Her cousins came to town for a few days. J was a big fan. I think it was Jim Gaffigan that said cousins are like celebrities for kids. All the cousins seemed to like each other. We took J to the Thinkery, to the nearby city pool, and to a couple restaurants. It took 4 days of screwed up nap/sleep/eating/nursing schedules before J started to get too fussy

– She fell asleep in the car without screaming! That’s an awesome first.

– I think it’s because of the biggest change: We’ve stopped cosleeping. It’s been hard on me in some ways, easy in others. She’s not waking up more at night, but I sure am. Last night, I only got 2 hours of sleep. So we still have to work that out, but she’s doing pretty well in the crib. She is waking up about 2-4 times a night, usually only for about 10-15 minutes except for one big one that lasts about 30-50 minutes. Otherwise she’s sleeping from 7:30-8pm until 6-8am. It’s a little unclear, since I started this a week ago today but her schedule started getting weird from the cousins’ visit on Thursday.

Well, it didn’t so much work to stop doing “milestone” posts and just doing regular posts. Although last Monday was particularly rough. J was going through a very difficult phase of not sleeping, and I wasn’t getting any sleep or time to myself. I was overwhelmed and had no time in the evening to post. I actually ended up taking her to the doctor because the daycare was concerned about how fussy she was being.

Anyway! This week is going much better. She magically stopped being fussy and hard to put to bed just as suddenly as she started.

Recent things:

– She hugged Fee! He wasn’t very happy about it but she was very gentle (and VERY excited) about it

– Attempting to put on socks. She will take a sock and hold it on to her foot. She hasn’t figured out how to put her foot inside the sock, but she definitely knows where it goes.

– Signing is getting clearer.. “more” looks more like itself and “all done” is definitely getting clearer. I think she wants to know way more signs than I know because she will point to things in her book and then look at me and seem frustrated with me saying the word. I feel the urge to sign it for her too. Every time she sees milk in one of her books she signs it to me.

– Walking backwards. Happening early!

– Turning lights on and off. If you hold her up to a light switch, she’ll turn it off and on! It’s a small thing, I know. But exciting for me. It’s amazing to me that you only need to show her something like that, a simple digital manipulation task, a few times and then she’s got it figured out! I think I turned the light on and off twice before she reached out and did it.

– Using utensils. She can frequently get food from a spoon to her mouth, and has the idea of dipping the spoon into food. She gets really excited for forks and always wants to play with mine. The other night we had sushi (she had a california roll) and she was fascinated by my chopsticks. She kept picking up a piece of rice and trying to stick it to the end of the chopstick, then putting the chopstick in her mouth. She will also consolidate foods on to a plate, if you give her a plate and a bunch of food next to it.

– Disappearing baby! She’s gotten good enough at moving that this has happened once to me and once to F: We have looked away for a second and she has disappeared! In my case, she had wandered from the dining room into the kitchen. Poor F looked away for about 10 seconds and then couldn’t find her anywhere… she had made it all the way to the master bathroom!

Her lashes, grown long and full, flutter against her cheeks. Her smile has relaxed into crinkled lips. Her hand is limp on her lovey’s edge, where not long ago she held it tightly in her pudgy fist and rubbed the soft cloth across her cheek. Her hands still smell like this morning’s cheerios. Her breathing is even, soft and sweet and milky. I brush the curl of hair resting on her forehead off to one side. She has the softest hair I’ve ever felt.

These moments are coming to an end, too soon too soon. It’s time to start moving her out of my arms, gently but steadily. Our afternoon naps will soon be in separate beds. Our nights connected by electronics rather than the warm, soft touch of my hand resting on her leg.

In my head, in my heart, I knew that the drops of blood that spilled as I cut the cord with her were symbolic of a lifetime of growing further apart. From that point on, we would be like taffy stretching, always recalling when we were a single being but growing further and further away. Some day, she would be able to walk away from me, tottering off to her own adventures (that day is already here). Some day, I will offer to nurse and she will say, “no thanks.” Some day I will send her off to camp and she will forget her sunscreen and bug spray and come home scraped, burned, bitten, and full of excited stories of all the cool things she did without me. Some day, she will move out and there will be entire days, weeks, where I don’t hear from her.

I have always tried to cherish the time I spend with her, even when it’s hard. When she was just a few days old I would walk outside in the middle of the night, singing endlessly and tunelessly to this screaming, exhausted, helpless being. Despite my own exhaustion and pain, I assured her that I would love her through every moment, that some day I would look back and miss those nights. And it’s true. I miss them. She is growing more independent by the day. And it’s time for the taffy to pull a little tauter. It’s time for me to give up watching her open her sleepy eyes, smile up at me, and give me her sweet, “hi” before settling back into sleep. It’s time to night wean, sleep train, move her into her own bed.

I will miss this. I am grateful that my husband and family and daughter have given me the emotional space to do this the way it felt most right in my heart. So I lean down, kiss her sweaty brow, whisper that I love her. I will hold the memories of my sleeping infant daughter as tightly, lovingly, and protectively as I now hold her.

And, because it’s best for her, I’ll let go a little bit more and feel my love stretch a little further, like taffy.

It’s been a big week. Big stuff happening!

– Her first birthday party! We had cupcakes and ice cream and a few friends over for kebabs and beers (for the adults). J didn’t really want the cupcakes or ice cream, but she had some peppers and squash from the kababs and a good time gnawing on her presents and helping open them. The dump truck and the dinosaurs were the biggest hits. The reptangles were a hit with the adults!

– She has also figured out how to sit down intentionally. It’s pretty cute to watch her walk up to my boppy pillow or a stuffed tofu, very carefully line herself up, turn around, and plop! down on her butt. She misses about 25% of the time, but when she lands just right she’ll often stand back up and sit back down a couple times.

– First dinner outing as a family (just us). I can’t believe it took us a year (okay, yes I can) to go out to dinner just the 3 of us. It was a great evening! J was pretty good, although she got impatient with sitting at the table long before Dad and I were done eating. I made a little barricade of chairs and let her wander around a little in that, then afterwards we went outside and she walked around for a while.

– Feeding others. I guess people are always putting things in her mouth, it’s only fair that she start to put food in other people’s mouths. Mostly mine, so far.

Some of the biggest things all seem to center around communication. It started last week with the pointing, and of course she’s been doing things like lifting her arms to be picked up, or holding out books for us to read to her, but there have been some big leaps!

– Understanding and following directions. She will sit down, come here, watch me, look there, give me what she has in her mouth if I say, “May I have that please?” It sounds like a list of tricks you’d teach your dog but they’re all very useful things with a baby too! Also, she will occasionally clearly understand you saying, “Come here please!” and choose to NOT come. Sometimes she seems mischievous about it and sometimes it’s plain that she just would rather keep on doing whatever she’s doing, thank you very much.

– Her understanding in general is so dramatic. She’s constantly pointing to things she sees, and seems satisfied if you tell her what they are. We have a bunch of foam letters and the other night she would hold one up. I would tell her what letter it was and then what sound it made. It’s hard to describe why I think this was more than just holding up various things and waiting for a response, but it really seemed like she was paying attention to the fact that I was making different sounds. Her favorite books these days are Pat The Bunny and any book with a variety of words. She just wants to hear them all.

– “Kitty” is definitely a word. I pointed out a dog the other day and she said “dog” back at me. She might have just been imitating, but I doubt it will be just imitation for long. We’re still not sure about “Dad”

– Signing! Holy cow is she signing now! At some point we were on the den floor and she was pointing at something in the kitchen. I told her I saw flowers and she pointed to the same spot again, so I told her I saw a cup. She grunted and pointed again, then looked at me and signed “milk.” Then I realized there was a bottle with milk in it sitting right next to the flowers! It was old milk so I didn’t let her have it, but I did offer to nurse. She will also sign for “play peek-a-boo with me” and when she’s “finished” with food/bath/etc. Just this morning she signed for “more” Cheerios! She had found one or two sitting in her carseat as I went to put her in, and ate them (It’s good for her immune system!). Then she looked at me and brought her hands together. I said, “You want more?” and she made the gesture again and gave me a huuuuuge smile and I swear I could see the excitement in her eyes. I called to Dad to bring a small handful of Cheerios. She was so happy to get them. The sign for “Cheerios” is very similar to how she signs for “milk” (and also how she waves hi/bye) so I should see if I can figure out a sign for Cheerios too.