Journal Excerpt

These are the things about her that I’m really getting a kick out of these days:

When we ask her, “where is God?” she cranes her neck back and looks up for a really long time at the ceiling. Then she points up her finger as far as she can, standing on her tippy-toes. Then she’ll look back at us while keeping her finger pointed straight up. The first time she did this, D laughed for five minutes straight.

When I ask her “give me a hug?” she’ll lay her head down against whatever part of my body she can reach and gently rest her hands against me. The first time she did this, it was always to the cats; she would sneak up behind them, lay her head down on them and wrap her arms around them, which was adorable.

She’s starting to walk, but she looks drunk doing it. She has this slow, wide-based gait, and frequently her tummy, which sticks out in front of her, overpowers her balance and sends her plopping down on her butt.

She discovered last week that she has a bellybutton, and it scared the living daylights out of her. When in the bath, she’ll occasionally feel for it, and immediately get frightened and want to be held. Most of the time her belly is so big she can’t see it, which is a good thing.

She can distinguish between all twenty-eight animals pictured on her blocks. I sometimes lay them all out in a grid, then ask her to point out various ones—swan, seal, hen, eagle—and she points to the right picture nearly one hundred percent of the time. The fact that she can’t really speak much yet makes this feat seem more brilliant than it probably actually is, but it floors me every time.

She prefers to eat in a civilized manner these days. If I lay out peas on her tray, she won’t touch them, but if I put them in a bowl and give her a spoon, she’ll patiently spoon up each one. Even if she misses, she seems to find the empty spoon just as tasty.

When we tuck her into bed now, she lies quietly on her back while we fold the blankets around, holding onto her security blanket and sucking her pacifier. She’ll rest her hand against her cheek to sign “sleepy.” Then she’ll take her pacifier out and with her other hand, blow us a kiss. Then she’ll put the pacifier back in and wave goodbye.