Girl’s Life

Happy 17 month birthday, Sophia!

I can hardly wrap my head around the fact that next month you’re going to be a year and a half old. That definitely seems like big-kid status to me. And you’ve totally earned that title with the busy month you just had. There was all kinds of learning going on and so many new adventures.

There were snow-filled weekends of playing in the mountains and princess dress-up parties. There were birthdays and cousins and friends and playdates. And, of course, lots of swinging. They say January is usually dull and dreary. Not with you, little girl. You’ve got way too much energy to just sit still and hibernate the winter months away. January was a slow month of blogging for me, but not because you weren’t up to all kinds of fun and mischief for me to write about. It was because you were having so much fun. I was just trying to keep up!

These days you’re cracking us up all the time with the funny ways you try to act older than your 17 short months. But just when we think you’re growing up too fast, you do something to remind us that you’re still our baby. Like when you finally figure out how to get a fork full of food into your mouth, only to decide after a few tries that it’s much too hard to eat a whole meal like that and end up ditching the utensils for grubby fistfuls of food instead. Or giving up both the pacifier and bottle in the same month, only to defer all that extra love and loyalty to your stuffed animals in a sweet (and fierce!) way.

My favorite thing about your toddlerness is that you seem to thoroughly enjoy every minute of life — one of the many lessons I can learn from you. You take the time to smell the roses, so to speak — stepping on every crunchy little leaf or stopping to admire yourself every time you see your reflection. But at the same time, you live life on turbo-charge. Those legs of yours might be little, but they are so fast. We took you to Toys ‘R Us for the first time the other day and let you down to look around for a few minutes. What were we thinking? You took off running (Oh my god! Elmo!), and it took all of our wrangling powers to get you back in your stroller.

You’ve decided this month to explore both your tomboy side and your pink and girly side. It’s been such a great thing to experience with you — you figuring out who you’re going to be. And oh, the kissing! Blowing kisses, Eskimo kisses, sloppy wet kisses. You are just one big make-out queen these days.

You’ve just decided talking is cool, too, (um, daddy’s girl?) and you pretty much haven’t stopped. And you’ve begun repeating everything we say. Sometimes that’s dangerous, but mostly it’s just cute. Here’s a little list of some of your recent adorable pronunciations:
no = nuh-NO
stickers = stickies
bubbles = bobbo
banana = nuh-nah-nah
apple = ap-bull

I must say, I was pretty jealous for awhile there that you would say only daddy on command (Pronouced “da-eee”. Adorable.) Even when asked to say mommy, you would answer with a sweet, yet taunting, “da-eee!” I begged and pleaded for just one mommy, to be met with what could only be described as a knowing smirk. Until this month, that is. Now it’s “mama, mama, mama” all the time. That is the sweetest sound I could have ever imagined. Before you came into my life, I was content to answer to the name Amy (well, and dozens of nicknames). But now that I’ve heard your sweet voice call me mama, I can’t imagine being called anything else. I’d miss a few blog posts for that any day.