The Reed Read: November 2011

Holy cow. Everyone said it would go by fast but I didn't really believe them. Now I do. In order to be as cliche as possible: I can't believe she is already ONE!

Last year at this time I was just getting used to the fact that Spike was a girl and now I'm spending the majority of my day chasing after my very fast crawler, stepping on downed Cheerios, trying to convince her that the cat door is not the best way to get to the basement, and loving my time rocking and nursing her-even in the middle of the night.

Amelia's latest obsession is putting things in and taking things out of containers of any kind. Bags, empty tissue boxes, drawers, the dishwasher, the bathtub, and the toy baskets are all acceptable receptacles. She also thinks it's fun to have mommy and daddy put her in the exersaucer for 2.4 seconds and then take her out again, only to want back in immediately. Same goes for the Bumbo and her ride on car/walker thing.

She also loves going for walks. Not in the stroller or the wagon (although these are quite fun as well) but recently she holds my fingers and walks to the door, points and signs 'please', once outside she walks down the street (with my support, she can't walk on her own quite yet). She made it all the way to the mailbox and back yesterday, by way of the other side of the street and a neighbor's toy ride-on fire truck. She spent at least 3 minutes stepping up and down the curb and prefers to walk in the street to the sidewalk. It's getting pretty cold out and this adventure is soon going to require snowboots. Hopefully she'll learn to walk on her own soon so my back can get a rest!

She repeats everything I say (although it all seems to be some derivative of "dada"). She tries to say 'diaper', 'ducky', 'Tristan', 'get dressed', 'banana', 'water', 'downstairs', 'outside', and 'cracker' but only a highly trained ear can detect the subtle differences between these common words. She can sign WATER, PLEASE, MORE, HELP, and ALL DONE-again, with her own Amelia spin on the actual ASL.

Every animal says, "ROAR!" We started with, "What does a lion say?" but Amelia has extrapolated this delightful sound to all animals (and some humans, aka. Cousin Tristan). She not only roars, but as can be seen in the pictures, she raises her hands in a ferocious display of King-of-the-jungle-dom. Pretty amusing.

If left to her own devices, Amelia would consume an entire box of Cheddar Bunnies. Three times now she has found the box that I "hid" (under the table so she would stop asking for them), opened it, dumped the crackers all over the floor and started eating. She also has the Houdini-like ability to get more cheddar bunnies, Cheerios, and other assorted snacks under her bottom while strapped into her car seat than were in her snack cup to begin with. I'm beginning to wonder if it's affecting the integrity of the car seat. She is also known to "accidentally" drop Cheddar Bunnies or Cinnamon Toast Crunch off of her high chair as a ready-made snack on the floor later when she can't get to her high chair.

She greets Daddy and I with a very politically correct Indian call when we enter her room and usually points to something interesting she sees across the room. She will play with a box of Bandaids for hours, taking all the crinkly slips of excitement out of the box, stuffing them back in, tossing them in the air, and handing them to whoever is near-by. She laughed hysterically last night while doing this before bed time.

This is obviously the year of the most growth and change and looking back at the little baby we brought home from the hospital it's hard to believe she is the same person. I'm a bit emotional today, remembering her birth and meeting her for the first time brings tears to my eyes, and I can only pray that the next many many years are as wonderful as this has been.

Here are some highlights from today:

She got way more amusement out of feeding daddy than herself.