The last month, and for the next month, the time I usually try to spend blogging I’ll be spending assembling the latest coffee table book. Hooray?

The other week she had her first UTI :(. She had been complaining of stomach pain for a day or two, and we assumed she was constipated again. Then she started running a fever Thursday night, so F stayed home with her on Friday. He called me Friday afternoon to tell me she was saying it hurt to go pee. So that night I took her to urgent care. We were there for about 4 hours, and when the doctor finally saw us, she was annoyed that J was refusing to pee. Eventually she did anyway, and then the doctor took it away. 45 minutes later she came back and said it was a UTI (no shit, sherlock!) and told me that J was extremely dehydrated. We had been in her clinic for hours waiting for her, and J was feeling sick earlier. I was mad. But, she gave us a prescription for chewable amoxicillin, and home we went. The symptoms were gone by late morning the next day.

Many of the mommy blogs out there tout cutting your child’s fingernails and toenails when they’re awake, even as babies, as this allows them to learn to be calm during the process. It took me all of .02 seconds of trying that when J was itty bitty to nope right out. I’ve been clipping her nails in her sleep for 2.5 years now and it’s been great. Except then my teeny flashlight died and before I had a chance to get a new one her nails were like talons. So I explained to her that I wanted to cut her nails. We have words to communicate with her now, see. And she sat patiently through the entire thing. There was no fussing, minimum wiggling, and she understood exactly what was happening to her. So I’m here to say that, in fact, cutting your child’s nails while they sleep won’t ruin them for life and they’ll end up in the guinness book of world records for longest fingernails due to unresolved childhood issues stemming from sleep clipping. Because you know, they totally have that record.

For labor day (6? 7 months ago?) we grilled out. Yes, it was the day I hurt my leg so badly. Anyway, while that event seemed to exlipse the rest of the day for me, it obviously didn’t for J. We were outside and she was telling me about how she stays away from the grill, because it’s hot. And I told her that yes it gets hot, and she started talking about “member, mommy? Member when we had the blue chairs and Amy was here?” I looked at her blankly, and F jumped in to remind me about the grill out we had, and the (blue) camp chairs we’d bought to accommodate people in the yard. J’s eyes lit up that he remembered, and it was amazing to hear her talk about something that happened so long ago. It reminded me of all the times she’s mentioned other things that I don’t believe she could possibly have remembered (riding on a bus to the airport when she was 7 months old? Really?!) but seemed to. I don’t understand quite how or when children lose their early memories, but I guess it’s not a case of being completely unable to form them early on. More that they just.. overwrite them later? I guess? Anyway. I’m grateful that I’ve always tried my hardest to treat her with respect and try to understand her even before she could talk, because seeing how much she actually remembers of the last couple years is a little intimidating.

While we were out there she picked up the lighter we use to light the grill (starter is busted). We took it away and told her it was a grown up tool. Of course, she asked why. We told her that it makes fire, and fire is hot and dangerous. We demonstrated. She asked where it kept the fire, and why wasn’t it hot? Deep breath. She just showed me that I’ve been underestimating her despite my best efforts. So we explained how lighters work. Very generally. I let her shake it to hear the butane slosh. I explained that it turned into gas and came out the tip. I let her hear the butane hissing out, and then I showed her how the lighter sparked and told her it was like when we were getting shocked on the playground earlier, but bigger. The butane is flammable, and so the fire stays lit as long as you hold down the button to keep it hissing out. She listened intently to the entire explanation. I’m definitely curious to see what she says the next time she encounters a lighter. Sometimes I swear I can see her filing away the things I say for later.

Crap, out of time!

Dear J,

Last year, your teachers asked us to write you a Valentine’s Day letter. This year they didn’t, but I want to anyway. I love you so much, little girl. You’re so independent, so curious, and so smart it blows me away. It seems like you remember everything, and it’s given me a real sense of my responsibility to teach you everything I can. When you look at me, your eyes are so clear and honest. I used to always say I didn’t want a dog because I wasn’t comfortable with the level of worship that they had for their owners. But children are the same, and when you look at me I can see that you trust me fully, openly, and with everything you are. It is sometimes a frightening responsibility, but I promise you that I will always do my best by you. I will hold you safely through all your feelings, big and small, hard and easy, ugly and beautiful. I am strong enough to stand with your anger and revel in your joy. And when the inevitable day comes when you realize I am not perfect, I hope I will have shown you that it’s okay to be imperfect and given you the tools to enjoy both your own imperfection and mine. And if I haven’t, well, I will still stand firm in my love for you as you lash and howl at the unfairness of imperfection in the world. I know that being two is so hard. There is so much to learn and your emotions are so volatile and frightening. I know that sometimes all you want is the power to keep me by your side always, and that it hurts you that I leave. One day, you won’t feel this way. I’m sorry I can’t be there all the time until that day comes. But I hope you are secure knowing that I am never very far away. I’m proud of you, too. You are learning so fast and changing so much and you are facing it bravely, with nothing less than eagerness. The last two and a half years have been some of the most exhausting, exhilarating, enlightening days of my life. You’re everything I ever wanted in a daughter. And then some. I hope you always keep your face in the sun.

Rapid-fire update: The floors are done. They look great. My visit to Baltimore was great too. Lots of family time! Never enough, but still lots. And a great painting session with my mom. Then Christmas came and went and was amazing. J got lots of stuff and we had a wonderful time playing in the snow and spending time with family. F and I got to go on a few dates too, which was really nice.

Okay, onto the humblebragging and sanctimommying!

Ever since our Christmas trip to Iowa, J has been much more into imaginative play. She’s been doing lots and lots of pretending to be other people, other things, etc. She’s especially fond of being mommy :). She’s also exploring emotions in more depth. She’s started “pretend” crying or laughing. Early on I decided that if she was “fake” crying or laughing, I would look at that as an expression of the emotion she’s feeling rather than some kind of bid for attention or sympathy. So far it’s been working really well! It keeps it from being annoying to me, and I think that helps me talk to her about big feelings without waiting until she’s got huge ones. So when she sobs and boo hoos, I talk to her about why she’s sad and how she can fix it. When she shivers and says she’s scared in a normal voice, I can talk to her about what to do when she’s scared. And because she’s not really very scared/sad, she can actually digest and practice what I’m saying. I don’t know if it will work when those too big to handle emotions come roaring down on her, but it definitely makes me feel better and gives me something to do when she’s “pretending.” (I keep putting that in quotes because I’m not sure I buy that just because there is no water coming from her eyes, she’s not sad, and possibly even sad enough to cry.) She doesn’t enjoy pretending to be angry, so that one has been harder. I’ve been trying to be more honest about when I’m frustrated, annoyed, or angry. One night last week she was so exhausted and mad she was screaming and scratching at herself. I was frustrated too, so I took her into the playroom and showed her how I wanted to punch a pillow and shout about what was upsetting me. Then we took turns doing that for a while. She would generally follow my themes, but was still getting out some of her own anger. I would say I was angry at work, because someone said something mean. She would say she was angry at school, because Mommy wasn’t there. I would say I was annoyed because I was hungry and dinner wasn’t ready, she would say she was annoyed at Daddy, because he said no [he did, it was what set off the tantrum]. So she was getting there! Eventually it became a game and she was calm enough to go eat and take a bath and go to bed.

Since I’m talking about emotions and how much she’s learning there… As I am wont to do, the other day as I was settling her down for bed, I sat there holding her and breathing in the smell of her hair (apples, baby shampoo, sunlight) and whispered, “I love you no matter what.” Normally she just nods, or ignores me, or sometimes will sigh and relax a little bit more. But that night, she looked up at me. I could just barely see her eyes shining in the darkness of her room, and she whispered, “I mad sometimes.” I whispered that I loved her even when she was mad at me. She followed up with, “I cry sometimes.” and I whispered that I loved her even when she was sad and felt like crying. Then a big breath and she admitted, “I like Daddy sometimes.” And in the same tone as the other two, I told her that I loved her even when she wanted Daddy and not me. Oh, the heart melting of that conversation. After I told her I loved her even then, she snuggled down into my arms and soon after fell asleep. I guess she’s old enough now that when I tell her I love her in all the different iterations that I do, they are starting to mean something to her. Plus, having her tell me out of the blue, “Mommy, I love you SOOOO much!” is just. Well. I guess this is the kind of thing that makes it all seem worthwhile.

She’s started being able to play alone more, although she’s still incredibly social and would much prefer if I played with her (or Daddy, if I refuse). It has become a strange dynamic at the dinner table. When she’s done eating, which she always is before us, she’s welcome to go play by herself. Or she can sit at the table and wait. Just about every night she will sit, and wait pretty patiently for a two year old, for me to finish dinner. It’s so sweet. But man, I’m looking forward to her really figuring out how to play without someone. If she ever does. I never really have. She might want a playmate until she’s old enough to read. Last night she actually said she needed help playing! It was so cute but I worry that we’re directing her playtime too much, and inhibiting her. Because worrying is awesome. And I don’t have real things to worry about.

She’s started demanding we do things, too. And when she’s trying to be especially forceful, she’ll tell us to probably do something. “You pobby stay here, Mommy!”

We started her on gymnastics! We just weren’t getting enough activity on Saturdays, and I wanted to switch her to afternoon swimming lessons anyway. So we signed up for a trial month of gymnastics on Saturday mornings. The first time we went in she was completely in love. She spent the entire 45 minutes running, climbing, hopping, swinging, and grinning. It was wonderful. She’s so excited to go back, too! We’re not planning to quit swimming lessons though, because those are also going, er, swimmingly. She’s starting to really start playing with her abilities in the water. Diving, taking breaths, changing directions. It’s really incredible to watch. So for now, we’re doing both.

Out of time. More news later!

My leg is finally better. Or more accurately, the open wound has closed. This means I can safely go back to the gym without risking another round of cellulitis, yay! So I’ve started that back up again, and it’s definitely making a difference in my anxiety levels.

The flooring has also arrived. All 2900 pounds of it. At first I thought they delivered the wrong thing, because the delivery truck left a few loose boards in our driveway. The boards they left look like a cheap material, and the wrong color, and glue-down instead of click-lock installation. F and I were both really upset because the delivery truck had left before we realized it. But as I kept looking at all these boxes, I kept noticing that they all said, “UNICLIC” on them. I know uniclic is a kind of click-lock system, so it kept irking me. Finally, I decided to check the boxes. At the very bottom of the pile was the one damaged box that we had assumed the boards we had sitting around had come from. So I moved a whole bunch of boxes out of the way (at 70lb each, whew!) to get to that damaged box, then piled them all back together and actually opened that box. The wood inside was not only completely undamaged, it was the right thing! Hooray! Crisis averted! Much celebration and relief! Also, it is every bit as gorgeous as the sample I had. I’m so thrilled. I can’t wait to see it in the house. I’m sure it will completely transform our space, and in a good way. The storage pod has also arrived, and we’re doing our best to get stuff into it. But moving out of your house without anywhere to move in to is definitely stressful! Especially since I don’t have any time to take a day off from work, so all our preparation has to be done after J goes to bed.

J continues to be amazing. We’re starting to really struggle with her food intake, and trying hard not to show her we’re struggling. All she wants to eat is Parmesan cheese and non-dairy creamer. Because that totally makes sense. We’re currently allowing her to eat Parmesan cheese, but she has to at least try each food we are having for dinner. In most cases, this means lick each food and then declare she doesn’t like it. It bothers F more than me. I figure she’s still eating fine at school, she’s still nursing to some extent, she’s obviously not starving. He’s worried about how it will look if people see how little she eats for dinners, and he and I disagree on how much to prompt her to eat. I’m sure that this, too, shall pass. In the mean time, we’re trying a variety of ways to handle it.

It’s basically time to start either listing the amazing/adorable things she has said every day, or to stop commenting on it all entirely. There’s so much! Every night she’s saying more and more and showing us just how absolutely brilliant kids are. I keep seeing all these studies that show kids as being intelligent and capable of complex reasoning and thought long before we previously assumed, and it baffles me. All I have to do is look at her and it’s obvious. And I don’t mean because I have the smartest kid in town. I just mean that kids seem so smart, I don’t understand why these study results are a surprise.

Okay now I feel all weird and braggy. Plus I promised I would get the baseboards painted before I went to bed.

My leg still sucks.

This week I finished lining up the flooring delivery, movers, and flooring installer so that they all arrived in the correct order and within a small amount of time. I’ll be out of town from December 2nd-6th, and so in that time we will have 2900 pounds of flooring and 13 rolls of underlayment delivered, have movers arrive to move all our furniture into the garage, have an installer come out and install aforementioned flooring, and then have the movers come back to put our furniture back into place. If all goes well, when I leave Wednesday morning we’ll have grody carpet and when I return, we’ll have beautiful wood floors. I’ll be taking J with me, so F will be on his own to wrangle cats and any issues that can’t be handled over the phone. It should be exciting. It will look like a new house! I’m so excited.

J continues to amaze me. She’s so thoughtful and empathetic. Whenever another child is crying, she always looks at me as if to say, “Look, she’s crying. What do I do?” When I show her that the child’s mommy or daddy is right there, helping, J still gets upset. For the last few nights, as I’ve been putting her to bed, she has been talking about crying on the turtle, crying for me, wanting mama on the turtle. Huh? Maybe they have a new turtle on the playground at school? It took me a long time to figure out that she’s talking about the foam turtles they sit on at the edge of the pool at swim lessons, while they wait their turn to swim! Once I figured that out, I was able to talk to her a little bit more about it. A couple weeks ago, Papa T. took J swimming without me. Apparently she had a tough go. It was the first time I hadn’t gone since she started almost 2 years ago! Anyway, once I figured out she was talking about swimming I was able to coax her through explaining that she missed me when she was swimming, and that she wishes I would get in the water with her and help her splash and swim like I used to. Now that she’s in a more advanced swimming class, I don’t get in the water with her. I guess she’s been missing that. I’ll need to find an indoor pool that I can take her to, because as soon as she talked about “spashing with YOU, mama! Kick kick! Big spashes!” I realized that I miss swimming with her, too.

She seems to be getting the hang of sharing, too. At mealtime, when one of us isn’t around, J will always set aside a couple bites of her favorite part to save for us. When I finish eating before she does, she tries to get me more food or offers me some of hers. When she’s eating a snack that she really likes, she’ll always say, “Mama want a bite?” and hold out a piece of it for me.

She’s also really beginning to express her opinions in ways that clearly shows she’s thinking about the world around her and what happens in it. Yesterday, F commented to her that she was growing into quite the young lady. Normally, she doesn’t really respond to this kind of comment. Sometimes she’ll nod, or look at you solemnly, but rarely does she say anything about it. Last night though, she thought for a moment and then said, very carefully and clearly, “I am.”

Also yesterday, F asked her what her name was. She used to respond, “Jojo!” and then moved up to, “Jo jeh peen!” but last night she took it even further and said, “Jo jeh peen TUH pee!” She’s also been saying our names are “Besh” and “Fannin” but when we asked her what our names are, she called us, “Tuhpee mama” and “Tuhpee Daddy.” So adorable!

She’s totally baby crazy. She adores going on walks with her baby and as we walk will talk about how her baby is crying because it misses mama or daddy, or how it’s laughing because it’s happy to be outside. When I picked her up the other day, she was rocking a wooden block with her picture on it and singing, “Wock a bye baby jo jeh peen, in nuh twee top! When nuh winn bows, uh uhh, cadle dopp!” and then she’d hug the block.

The biggest news from this week is that she drew a family portrait that is beginning to look like people! It was in her cubby with all the other art she makes like it was nothing. Last week, she colored inside lines and this week she’s drawing mommy and daddy?? OMG! I’m going to frame it!

So for a while there, I managed to lock myself out of the new server. It took a while to figure out what I’d done (note to self: always check /etc/hosts when DNS is weird).

On Labor Day (September 7th) I had a dizzy spell and fell on my shin, badly enough that I decided to go to the ER. The good news was, nothing broken. The bad news was, a terrible infection ensued. After 4 different antibiotics and a slew of visits to various doctors, we got the infection under control and I got a referral to “Wound Care.” Which is a thing I’m happy to say I never knew existed until now. And I sort of expected it to be more bandaids and gauze like I’d been using, but the technology is actually pretty advanced and well beyond the kind of stuff I could do at home. So I’ve got a big hole in my shin and I’ve been going to the hospital twice a week to have it pulse lavaged, debrided, and other things that sound just about exactly as fun as they are. Pro tip: if you don’t know what those things are, do not do an image search. And probably be careful on any webpage. It’s not pretty. In fact, try a text browser.  So that’s been exhausting and taking up a lot of my time and energy both. J has been very good about not touching my leg when I’m rewrapping it. She likes to look at my “owie” but knows better than to poke it. She has started asking to wear a “bannaid nike mama [bandaid like mama]” and so I’ve been taping a little piece of gauze to her leg to match. It’s pretty cute.

Speech therapy is exploding! She’s continuing to amaze everyone with her progress. She’s coming up with new and complex sentences every day, and getting more understandable to not-me. (I can usually understand her pretty well). When we’re looking for something she’ll often say things like, “It pobby in nuh den” or “Might be in Daddy car! I sheck! [check] Mama come sheck too?” The other day she was trying to figure something out and she said, “I dink it out. Hmm!” and put her hand on her cheek like she was thinking. She’ll say she doesn’t know the name of things, and she’s excited to learn that Papa T. and I have names too. As part of her language skills, she’s started telling me a lot more about the experiences she has. She had a sitter the other day and when I got home, J declared, “Ms. Ashee take my baby shoe away!” Indeed, Ashley had taken her doll’s shoe because she wouldn’t stop putting it in her mouth.

She’s also figured out that mom and dad sometimes give different answers, and if we’re in different rooms and one of us says no to something, she’ll run and ask the other one! Now that we’re on to her, we’ll work out a system, but she definitely got a few extra treats for a few days in there.

We had a plumbing leak in August. For a while, because of my leg, we were stalled out on dealing with it. We had the leak fixed and insurance sent some people out to tear out some carpet and dry our our walls, but we stopped there and had a 3’x3′ square cut out of the carpet in the den. Well, once I got the ball rolling on it again, our insurance company said they’d pay to replace all contiguous carpet with same-quality flooring. That’s the den, the hall, and the front room, and leaves only the bedrooms with their original flooring. Well, we hate the carpet, and Papa T. in particular hates ALL carpet. So, for a little bit extra, we’re having all the carpet in the house replaced. Adding 3 bedrooms didn’t add much to the cost, and I found a great deal on some really nice laminate hardwood that we’re going to use. It’s been pretty stressful to add that to all the other things we’re doing, but it will be worth it in the end.

We’ve decided that it’s okay for J to have an iPad in the car. She plays games and watches Peep and the Big Wide World or Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood. It keeps her from screaming the whole way, and it’s still well below the recommended 2 hours of screen time per day. And it’s not like we are replacing much interaction, since when driving we can’t do much with her in the back seat. It’s a win for everyone except that part of me that wants to feel guilty for not being perfect. So the other day she was watching an episode of Peep that involves Peep being chased by a cat. And she kept saying, “Nonono! Bad! No cat!” as the cat chased Peep around. So cute!

And speaking of cats, she’s recently started helping us feed the cats, who have all lost a lot (too much) of weight. We’ve switched them all to wet food in hopes that it will help them gain some weight back. She loves to put the bowl down on the ground and watch them lick it up. The other day she accidentally dropped the bowl and it shattered, and she was very upset. She was really sad that she broke the bowl, poor kid. I told her it was okay, we all have accidents, and Daddy and I would never be mad at her for an accident. She seemed to take it to heart and happily helped clean up the mess and then put down a new (plastic!) bowl of food for the cats.

She’s back on the Miralax :(. It’s been a rough couple of weeks, and she kept sitting on the potty and straining, and nothing would come out. At school, she had a very very painful poop, and complained of pain and not wanting to go potty after it. So we’ve put her back on miralax in hopes that it will help. It’s already helped a little, I think. The other day she went and started to cry, but stopped while she was going. It seemed to me like she was expecting it to hurt more than it actually did. She wouldn’t let me wipe her because it hurts, but she was going into the bath so I was okay with a pretty cursory swipe. The good news is, she’s old enough to drink (and enjoy) a couple ounces of apple juice! So we’re just mixing it into that daily, and explaining to her that it’s medicine to help make going potty not hurt. She seems on board with the whole thing.

I am starting to get a little frustrated with her teacher. She will frequently say when I pick her up that she’s hungry and that they ran out of whatever lunch was when she asked for more. She’s obviously not starving, but I worry. About all the things. Because motherhood. The teacher will also always says she’s had a good day, even when there are days I am pretty sure she had a rough go of things.  Yesterday when I picked her up, she was so upset about a doll she wanted (that wasn’t hers) that I basically swooped her out to the car and sat with her for a while and snuggled with her to help her calm down. It was weird, because there was no build up at all. I’m guessing that all the build up happened earlier in the day, and she hadn’t actually resolved her feelings about not being able to have the doll, only set them aside until I picked her up. I remember being young and crying so hard that I couldn’t even breathe. It was so awful to watch her go through it! But, she felt better after looking at a couple pictures of similar dolls on the internet. She looked at them on my phone as I drove home, and by the time we got home she was ready to give me my phone and move on.

Yesterday was also the first time Dad and I went out on a weeknight date. Ani DiFranco was in town, and for his birthday I got him tickets. We had a sitter from 6-12, although we didn’t leave until 7 and got home at about 11:15. Apparently, J was determined to wait up for us. She wasn’t rambunctious or difficult, she just insisted on waiting for mama and daddy. When we got home, she’d only JUST fallen asleep. Sweet girl!

Okay, I think that about covers the last 6 weeks. Whew!

Welcome to the new website! The change should be basically invisible to you. I had to migrate my WordPress installation from one cloud server to another. Having a WordPress site, even one that is religiously kept up to date, was just pounding the bejesus out of the old server, which made it unusable for the rest of my family. Well, I’ve been looking for an excuse to explore EC2/AWS, so here we are! Hello!

It’s been crazy. Now that I’m actually sitting in front of a blank posting screen again, I can’t remember what happened in the last month. J started saying, “I love you” with delightful sincerity and regularity.

She also got re-tested for both her “proprioceptive disorder” and her speech delay, and both have improved significantly. She needs more occupational therapy for balance, coordination, and body/space awareness. I’ll be surprised if she gets much better though… some things are just innate, and she comes by her clumsiness completely honestly. I hope I’m wrong about this one, because it’s not fun to be clumsy, but I am not really holding my breath. Her speech also still needs some work, although she has become much more intelligible and also much more self confident about her ability to talk. She still needs more work there despite testing well within normal for both her ability to communicate and her ability to pronounce sounds. The problem seems to be that she can’t string together sounds quite right yet, which makes her speech hard to understand. However, she’s absolutely brilliant about compensating. She uses a lot of ASL if she knows the sign, and some pretty impressive pantomime if she doesn’t. I’ve also noticed she’ll use synonyms when she can, or add in adjectives when she’s having trouble. In short, she’s smart enough to be effectively working around her speech delays. Speaking of smart (okay, I’m sorry, I know I’m straight up mommybragging here, but I’m gonna anyway) she also tested at the level of a 6 year old for receptive language skills (how much she comprehends when spoken to). Basically, the receptive test is a whole bunch of stuff that just keeps getting more complex and with a larger vocabulary, and the idea is that the tester continues to ask the child questions until the child gets so many wrong. The therapist wrote me a note saying that she Just. Kept. Going. with J. Yay!

What else? Potty training is here and there. Mostly she does great, although we do need to remind her of the Daniel Tiger song that goes, “If you have to potty, stop and go right away!” Generally we only need to remind her once about that one.

She’s completely adjusted to the new classroom, and is absolutely nuts for her teacher, Mr. Julian. Ms. CeCe left, which was hard for everyone, but the new teacher (also named Cece, by pure coincidence) is wonderfully sweet and a great fit. All this week, when I’ve picked J up from school, she hasn’t wanted to leave. Mr. Julian is the teacher that closes most days, and when I come, J wants to involve me whatever game he’s currently playing with the kids, then throws herself into his lap for cuddles and tickles. I did spent about 30-45 minutes at school playing one day, and sadly now J wants me to do it every day. It was wonderful to see how much she loves school and how well taken care of she is, but it has made for some very rough pickups, since she wants that to be the norm. We’ll get through this one, just like everything else.

Two more molars have arrived! Halfway, anyway. Both bottom molars are poking out, making her mouth hurt all the time and making brushing her teeth difficult, because trying to get those two brushed is tough before they’ve fully emerged. No sign of molars on top yet.

That’s all I can think of for now. A whole month of missed posts, and who knows what wonders are lost to the ages now ;).

I take a picture of my daughter every single day. Actually, that’s a lie. I take many many pictures of her every single day. And yet somehow, I don’t manage to capture the amazing truth of her. Sleepy eyes when she first opens them for the day, the sound of her giggle at bedtime, the look on her face when she wants to play in the pool. The way she bounces in her seat when she get excited for whatever snack. The way she sings. The way she relaxes into my arms when I pick her up from daycare. The way she scoots away because I’ve told her only one more song (she watches songs on my iPad before bed, while I do her hair) and she knows the song is almost over. The way she wiggles her hand in mine until she finds exactly the right spot. The myriad things that make up our every day together, and yet are so fleeting. When she was newborn, it was about the smell of the top of her head, the way she rested her head on my shoulder and preferred one side over the other. The way my arms ached when she wasn’t in them. So many things, fleeting and gone. Some of them are wisps of memory and some are lost to the ages (or the next baby, I wonder?). This afternoon I found myself wondering what I thought about before she came along. Work, ferrets, cooking, of course my husband. Going out, doing theatre, meeting up with friends. Gaming. It seems almost like it belongs to someone else, but as she’s gotten older and more independent, it is coming back, but it all seems a little bit less shiny. Besotted. That’s what I am.

Enough of the cheesy stuff for a paragraph or two! Last weekend in swimming class, she was evaluated. And she’s already being moved up from “super waterbabies” to “extreme waterbabies.” I had to ask what the difference was, because for me the biggest change has already happened; I don’t get in the water with her anymore. (I sit on the sidelines, and I have to say, that room is HOT and STICKY and GROSS when you aren’t in the water!) Well, the difference is that she will get to spend more of her time in the water, and more time using full breath control. Which is good. I’d started thinking about signing her up for 2 lessons per week just to give her a chance to get more time in the water. She’s never ready to leave by the time class is over.

She has started potty training! She wears panties to school every day, and usually comes home with only one pair in which she had an accident. Unfortunately, she remembers each one, so every time I try to offer her a choice of panties in the morning, she will choose a pair because “that one peepee!” Even when I explain to her that I’ve washed it, and there’s no peepee in them anymore, she will refuse to wear any pair of panties in which she’s had an accident. I think I might try showing her the washer full of her clothes and explain how it gets all the dirt and spills and peepee out of clothing. And I’d better do it soon because we’ve only got one or two more patterns left!

She’s also sprouting up so fast. I need to go through all her clothes and pull out everything 3T and smaller. It shouldn’t be hard, since that’s about 99% of her wardrobe. Guess she gets some new clothing!

Okay,  that’s all I have time for tonight.