Just Powers

Today marks the end of Will’s first month as a member of the world. Up to this point he has proven to be incredibly mellow and laid back, but lest the karma gods think I am mocking them, let me say that I am sure he will start crying inconsolably any minute now.

He is incredibly snuggly, and spends most of his awake time staring with big bright (blue?) eyes at whatever enters his field of vision. He really only cries when he is hungry and often makes snorting/trumpeting noises that remind me a of a tiny little pachyderm.

He eats A LOT, which is good for him, if slightly tiring for me (and also makes it really hard to finish thank you notes…). He was 7 lbs. 3 oz. at birth, 7 lbs when we left the hospital, 6 lbs. 13 oz. at one week and 7 lbs. 6 oz. at two weeks. No doubt the constant eating will translate into a big weight gain at his one month check up this Friday, I will keep you posted.

We got what really really looked like a smile at about 3 weeks and he already has crazy-good head control and an iron grip. He loves lights and just in the last couple of days has started tracking people and objects with his eyes.

His sister seems to still be pretty fond of him, and we of course adore him. He’s a keeper.

Emma turned 28-months old yesterday. In the last month or so, we have seen an all-new, not necessarily improved, Emma. It’s as if someone reminded her she is two-plus-some and she really needs to do her part upholding the image that two-year olds have around the world and get crackin’ on that “terrible twos” thing.

Maybe the arrival of a sibling is partially responsible for sparking the newfound ornery-ness, but I kind of think we would be experiencing similar changes with or without the new baby. The difference would be that Mike and I would not be distracted, exhausted and hormonal as we try to deal with her.

When I can look at the situation from FAR FAR outside of myself, and think of this phase as her job, something she has to do to develop appropriately and move to the next stage of person-hood, I can feel almost proud. “Man, she is so good at finding opportunities to be independent!” “Wow, she is really skilled at questioning authority and finding her own way of doing things!”

Unfortunately, I am very rarely FAR FAR outside of myself these days, and when that little stinker puts her foot up on the table during dinner – despite my REPEATED warnings not to – my eyes begin to bug out of my head and I begin to speak in tongues and she smiles at me as if it were the funniest thing ever and then announces she would like to go into a time-out… well, those are the moments I have trouble feeling especially sane, let alone proud.

But she is very proud to be a big sister, and every morning comes into our room and wants to see her “baby bruvver”. She especially likes to hold him “on the sofa” and always offers to hold his hand during a diaper change. She loves to give him sweet gentle kisses and lots of hugs. The good news is that she doesn’t seem to hold Will responsible for his arrival at our home, the bad news is that she does hold me responsible from time to time. A few nights after we got home from the hospital she threw a book at my head – an act she seemed to find as shocking and upsetting as I did. As things start to settle down, though, she seems to be forgiving me, and our relationship is getting as back to as normal as possible. When she isn’t putting her feet on the table.

Oh – and she can now count to 11 (before she skips to 14, 16, then back to 6) and can ALMOST sing the entire alphabet, although she likes to jump to the “Now I know my ABC’s…” part after the letter L or so, so we sing it with her to keep her on track.

There are times when Emma does something particularly, shall we say, rebellious? independent? – and she gets a little twinkle in her eye. Sometimes I swear I can see a 14-year-old version of herself in there somewhere, and it completely terrifies me…

Emma is two years old today. I could go on and on about how fast the time has gone and how I can’t believe what a big girl she is and how it seems like just yesterday that we were bringing her home from the hospital and wondering what the heck we were going to do with her. I won’t waste your time with such silliness though, because no doubt you have your own “gosh how the time has flown” experiences so you know exactly what I mean.

So let me just move right into what Emma is up to these days. Since I haven’t written her updates for the last four months I am going to try to do a quick recap of previous months, partly for you, but mostly to help me remember these months when she is off at college and I am sitting at home sobbing into my tea over how fast my baby grew up.

20 months: July
This month was pretty low key, in preparation for the big adventure of San Francisco happening at the end of the month. She started doing this thing this month where she lowered her head and looked at her hands when someone she didn’t know looked at her or was introduced to her. If the person persisted long enough they could usually get her to smile and look up. I can’t figure out if she is actually really shy (which would not be unlike one of her parents) or if she tends more towards the dramatic (which would be just like the other parent) or maybe it is a combination of the two.

21 months: August
This month was filled with more travel - to Bethany Beach with Grammy and Grampy and then to Burlington, Vermont to visit Kate, Jack and Jim. In Bethany she helped us build a sand dolphin and rode on her first carnival rides at Funland. In Burlington she went to the Champlain Valley Fair, played with Jack in a big box of corn (think sand box, only with corn, completely ingenious really) and visited the Ben and Jerry’s factory. At the Champlain Valley Fair, we visited the petting zoo, something I thought she would love. She was, in fact, terrified, and couldn’t get out of the building fast enough. When we visited the animals outside she was fine, her terror seemed triggered only by being inside with the animals - a reaction she also had a few weeks earlier at the elephant house during a visit to the zoo. Made me wonder if she might have just a touch of claustrophobia to contend with as she gets older.

22 months: September
I remember going to the pediatrician at Emma’s 18 month check up and asking him if I should be concerned that, with the exception of a couple of words, she really wasn’t doing much talking. He told me that everything was probably fine, but that if we got to about 22 months and I still had concerns, that I should give him a call. Last month, as her language failed to appear, I started gearing myself up to call him. This month, almost overnight, and right on cue, Emma started talking. A lot. Word after word after word. She couldn’t get enough and she got almost all of her new words right on the first try.

After all the travel of the last month and a cold, she did have a little setback with her sleep this month. She cried bitterly every time we tried to leave her and in an attempt to help her re-learn how to put herself to sleep, I spent weeks staying with her until she fell asleep, then I would sneak out of the room. One night I finally came to my senses and decided that we just were going to have to let her cry for a couple of nights. We did, and she did, and three nights later she was back to falling asleep peacefully on her own.

This was also the month that Emma started sleeping in a big girl bed. We moved the bed into her room when we found out we were going to need the spare room for the baby, but didn’t know if she would be ready to move into it before the baby came. On a whim one day we asked her if she wanted to take a nap in the big girl bed and she said yes. That night we asked if she wanted to sleep in the bed or her crib and she chose the bed. She never looked back and the next weekend we took the crib down and took it out of her room. (And no, her sleep disturbances were not a result of the switch to the big-girl bed, they started weeks before she decided to sleep in it. If anything, switching to the big bed helped her settle back into a routine.)

23 months: October
This month, to our amazement, Emma’s words turned into sentences. I think the first one was “I want pancakes” around the middle of the month. She continued to sleep like a champ and if it is even possible her cute factor went up by about, oh, a ZILLION.

We made our second annual trip to Homestead Farms to pick pumpkins with Aunt Jocelyn this month and later in the month Emma got a special weekend visit from Grammy and Grampy. We were pretty low key for Halloween - no trick-or-treating really, just handing out candy at the door - although Emma spent the entire month singing “Hush Hush” and dancing around in her Horse costume.

24 months: November
The 24th month of Emma’s life will always be the one that started with the election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States. Emma went to the polls with us on voting day and when she and I pressed the touchscreen button for Obama together, I cried. Her “I Voted!” sticker is still stuck on the wall in her room.

Words words words. She is talking so much now that it is hard to even remember a time when she wasn’t. Most of her words are pretty easy to understand, although interestingly when a word isn’t 100% clear, it is usually daddy who gets it first, not me. She narrates constantly - “Emma mommy daddy eat waffles” - and has started having conversations with her stuffed animals every morning when she wakes up. I have to tell you, listening her chatting to “fuzzy bear” first thing in the morning is a completely delightful way to wake up.

Both Mike and I were both born with ankyloglossia. While you are trying to figure out how to pronounce that, I will quickly explain that this is just a minor condition that limits the movement of the tongue. The frenulum (the little membrane that connects the tongue to the floor of the mouth) is a little too long or thick or something and it keeps the tongue from moving as effectively as it needs to for things like talking. The only treatment is to clip that pesky frenulum to give it a little more movement (although clipping it is a lot less common now than it was when I was little). My frenulum was clipped when I was about two, so I have never had an issue with it really. Mike’s frenulum was not clipped and when he was learning to talk he pronounced all of his “L’s” and “R’s” as “Y” (now the only issue he has with it is the inability to stick his tongue out at me when I piss him off).

Maybe you can tell where all this is going? Yep, Emma predictably was born with ankyloglossia just like both of her parents. She can’t stick her tongue out at us when she gets mad and she can’t pronounce “L’s” and “R’s”. Her attempts result in some of my favorite words from her - room becomes yoom, leg becomes yeg, love becomes yuv and rumpus becomes yumpus. Cutest thing evah.

Everything these days is “SELF!” (as in “I will do it MYSELF mother. HANDS OFF.”) and she has discovered the joy of playing with baby dolls. She wraps up her stuffed animals in kitchen towels and lays them very gently in a box she has found somewhere and then she runs to get her blankie from her bedroom so she can tuck them in. I am pretty sure the baby doll obsession sprang from watching other little girls do it at day care and not from the impending birth of her baby brother, something she still hasn’t really seemed to be able to wrap her head around. Of course, I haven’t really wrapped my head around it either, come to think of it.

There is so much more to share, but it would be nice for you to be finished reading this post before Emma turns three, so I will try my best to end here. Suffice to say we are delighted daily at our little girl - I don’t think either one of us thought we would so thoroughly enjoy her toddlerhood. She is the light of our life and makes us smile constantly.

Happy Birthday sweetheart.

At some point early on in this month the toddler fairy came to visit our house. She waved her wand over Emma while she was sleeping, and *poof* our baby was gone and our little girl was here.

Yeah. I guess it didn’t happen that way, but her transformation from baby to little girl did happen this month - with startling rapidity.

No more drama this month with sleeping or separation anxiety. Just lots of new facial expressions, more dancing, more singing, and a serious ratcheting up of the cute factor.

Emma lost her second great-grandmother this month, and I lost my Grandmother. I have been feeling her loss acutely but am thrilled that she got a chance to meet Emma and spend some time with her before she passed away.

Gram’s funeral was highly surreal. It was held at the Dupont Funeral Home in Bristol, Connecticut which is in a house built by her grandfather, my great-great-grandfather, in 1903. Gram spent many family holidays there as a child, and later married my Grandfather in the house. To stand in a room that was once my great-grandfather’s bedroom, at my grandmother’s memorial service, while I held my daughter, was a little mind blowing.

We drove to Connecticut for the funeral and Emma was wonderful. We left at 5 am and got four hours of driving in before she needed to stop, which meant we were almost there. On the way home we left at around 4:30 pm and didn’t need to stop much either since a lot of the drive was after her bed time.

Once we got through the funeral and made it back home, Emma had places to go and people to see.

A few months ago Mike’s dad got to choose a gift from his company as a thank you for an unimaginable number of years of service. He looked through the options and the only thing that jumped out at him was a Eureka! mansion tent which he guessed maybe his granddaughter might enjoy rattling around in.

This month we tested the tent for the first time on an overnight camping trip with Emma’s friend EJ, who brought his parents along for the ride. Emma had her own room (no, seriously, she did) and the tent held up well during the torrential downpour that started at about 3am. We went on a hike with Emma, taking turns carrying her on our back, which she enjoyed. Enjoy would be a strong word to describe how Mike and I felt about the hike. *Happy to get to the end of it and to have survived* is probably much more appropriate. The camping trip was lots of fun and we are hoping to be able to go at least once more before the we wimp out because of cold weather.

The weekend after the camping trip was the best weekend EVAH. My friend Kate left her idyllic life in Vermont to come visit us in hot and sticky DC. She brought her cute-as-a-bug son Jack, who is 10 weeks younger than Emma, and there was great rejoicing. We hung out, went to the zoo, played in the Silver Spring fountain and just generally had a great time. Emma loved playing with Jack but seemed a little stressed by the end of the weekend. I think all the FUN was getting to her. Plus since Jack’s daddy couldn’t come, Emma’s daddy was doing double duty, which she was NOT a fan of.

Clearly we kept Emma pretty busy this month. She still had time to learn “Itsy Bitsy Spider” and now walks around the house singing “Down rain! Down rain!”. At some point during their visit, Kate was trying to get Jack to say sorry and Emma obliged by saying “sorry!” loud and clear. Mike and I practically fell out of our chairs since we had never heard her say it before. So she is picking up a few words here and there. Being the perfectionist she is, I think she is just waiting until she can get a word *just right* before using it regularly. We can wait. I do love listening to her little voice though.

Things are pretty fun around our house these days.

18 months. One and a half years. Almost two. Amazing.

Emma started out this month conquering two of her biggest demons from the last few months - separation anxiety and sleep.

One day she just seemed to decide that, actually, day care isn’t so bad after all, so no more crying. Towards the middle of the month she actually started waving goodbye to me and blowing me kisses as I left her for the day. We even started sending her to day care twice a week this month, which didn’t seem to phase her one little bit.

Just about the time I wrote this post - that very night in fact if I am remembering correctly - Emma also decided that sleep is pretty cool after all, SO sorry for all that crying before. For a good week or two Mike and I didn’t even discuss the new change, terrified that we would jinx it, but eventually we took a deep sigh of relief and realized we had made it through yet another phase in our baby’s life.

(For the record, we have stuck with the sippy cup with milk routine, although we make it half water, half milk now, in an effort to do less damage to her teeth and also ease her to all water eventually. Also - thanks to Amy and Dawn for the suggestion that we check with Moxie on sleep disruption. Turns out sleep disturbances around 18 months are pretty common. So phew, we weren’t crazy. About that at least.)

With those developmental hurdles behind her, Emma is back to being a pretty low-maintenance and fun little person to be around.

She went to Mother’s Day brunch with Grandpa and Yummy and Great Grandma Julia and Aunt Jocelyn and Uncle Mars. She went to see the butterflies at Brookside Gardens and hung out with Uncle Patrick at Taste of Wheaton. And for Memorial Day weekend she hung out in Chestertown, Maryland with her aunts Jocelyn and Emily, Grandpa, Yummy and Uncle Mars.

We finally picked up some words this month - “round and round”, “down”, “water”. She will occasionally look at us earnestly and speak some sort of gibberish that clearly means something but that we cannot for the life of us figure it out. That is the worst. We will get there though, I am sure of it. She has also added “please” and “thank you” to the sign language she uses on a regular basis.

At her 18 month check up she was 32 1/2 inches long and weighed 23.2 lbs - still kind of a peanut. She is the only child I know whose clothing size is actually her age.

Summer with her is going to a ball.

Emma turned 17 months old today.

Her separation anxiety continued this month, with the most difficulty being Monday mornings at day care. Leaving her wailing in the arms of Miss Kathy made me want to quit my job at least four times this month. Somehow the knowledge that she is developing appropriately is no consolation on those mornings.

Sleep became a challenge for her this month (and last month too really) in a way it has never been before. And by *challenge* I mean *nightmare*. Our once rock-star-sleeper now cries every night before finally falling asleep. We don’t let her go too long before going back in and rubbing her back, and she eventually falls asleep, but it is so hard to watch her having such difficulty with something she used to do with such ease.

Besides the challenges, this month had its share of fun and adventures for her too.

Emma’s Grammy and Grampy from Massachusetts visited for a long weekend this month. She blew bubbles with them, and took them to Ikea and Mayorga Coffee and Red Dog Cafe and just generally hung out and had a good time. She can’t wait to spend a whole week with them at the beach this summer.

Emma also traveled to New Jersey this month to see her Poppy and Nonnie, Aunt Lexi, Great Gram, Aunt Sally and Uncle Bill and Uncle Tim and Aunt Elvie. She loved meeting Aunt Lexi’s new *baby*, Mowgli - a French Bulldog - and spending time with everyone. I think the highlight of the trip though was the grandfather clock that chimed every hour, causing Emma to run to the living room to watch it.

We have had hundreds of gypsy moths in our yard this month, and Emma can’t get enough. She runs to the back door every morning looking for them and whenever we go outside she finds them and waves at them as though they are BFF.

She also became obsessed with The Wheels on the Bus this month. She moves her hands in circles and looks at us with her eyebrows arched, waiting for us to start singing. She loves when the doors go open and shut and likes to jerk her hand behind her when the driver says “Move on back”. Cutest thing ever.

She is still playing with sound combinations, and although we recognize words occasionally there is nothing that she says with regularity. She continues to pick up sign language though - please and thank you! - and this month signed “more milk”, her first phrase.

We continue to be amazed at her bravery and determination and how much she understands about her world. We love her with all our hearts.

Emma turned 16 months old today. It was a tough, but exciting month for her.

She spent the first half of the month feeling pretty sick from the vaccines she got at her 15 month visit - I suspect it was the MMR that did her in. She spiked a fever of 103.4, had what I guess is the classic rash associated with measles (or is it mumps?), and was really really miserable for two full weeks. Around the same time, Mike was out of town and she seemed to really miss him, which only exacerbated how bad she was feeling.

Once Daddy returned and she started feeling better, the slide incident showed us that Emma is pretty much fearless, even if the same can’t be said of her parents. She continues to go down the slide on her belly, face first, any chance she gets, as this video documents.

The climbing she was just beginning to enjoy last month has become an obsession. She climbs up on the dining room chairs at every opportunity and once even pulled one down on top of herself. Luckily we were right there to rescue her and she didn’t get hurt. The incident did prompt a “no climbing” rule for the dining room chairs however. It’s a battle we are not likely to win, but we keep trying.

She also decided this month that going down the stairs backwards on her belly is for losers, pah! She now walks up and down the stairs holding on to the railing, if there is one. If a railing isn’t there, then Mommy or Daddy better be, cause she is going anyway. When we leave the house in a hurry and I have to carry her down the stairs to get her in the car, she screams in protest. As soon as we arrive home and I take her out of the car seat, she wriggles out of my arms so she can walk up to the front door.

As if sliding and climbing and stair-walking weren’t enough, just in the last week she has started *jumping*. She bends her knees and then jumps up by straightening her legs without her feet leaving the ground. She thinks it is hysterical. Imagine what she will do when she can actually get some air.

Even though she is fearless on the slide and the dining room chairs, Emma started showing some pretty classic signs of separation anxiety this month, which certainly wasn’t helped by how sick she felt during the first half of the month. She was tearful and clingy much more than usual and it tugged on my heart something fierce. I used to be able to leave her at day care and she would happily run off to play with the other kids without so much as a “see ya mom”. Now I can’t get out of there without lots of tears and a pouty lower lip and the arms reaching for me in desperation. This of course causes me to have my own tears and pouty lower lip all the way to work.

I know it’s just a stage, and a developmentally appropriate one at that, but it is a tough one. She wants me to hold her all the time and has lost any ability to entertain herself, even though she used to be great at it. One day I know she will grow out of this though and I will pine for the moment in time when she wouldn’t even let me put her down so I could go to the bathroom. I will grab her and sneak in a hug and a kiss in the nanoseconds it takes her to peel herself away from me to go play with her friends. So I am trying just to cherish the closeness that comes with her new neediness and not feel smothered by it.

She is still mostly just chattering, not a lot of intelligible words yet, although every once in a while we hear something that is unmistakable. Last week, she said…wait for it…”lasagna”. Yep. Lasagna. She also says “EJ”, a friend she plays with about once a week, although it sounds more like “Eej”.

Her sign language on the other hand is going great - she seems to pick up a sign after only seeing it a couple of times, something that has amazed me on more than one occasion. In addition to “more”, “finished” and “milk” which she has been signing for a while, she now signs “again” (to be fair, a sign that is pretty close to more, but she uses it in context which blows us away), “apple”, “bird”, “thank you”, “eat”, “raisin” (my favorite) and we are working on “please”.

This month she shared Easter with her Aunt Jocelyn (who doubled as the Easter Bunny with her rockin’ Easter baskets - yes plural), went to the Kite Festival at the Washington Monument with us and visited the cherry blossoms in full bloom with EJ and Bridget. She did some gardening with Mommy and was fascinated by all the flowers showing up the yard - especially the hyacinths and daffodils in the front.

She continues to eat almost anything, and this month discovered she loves berries of any kind. She also enjoyed fajitas for the first time, and wolfed down the aforementioned lasagna. Oh! And finally this month, she got really good at drinking from a cup. At the beginning of the month she could do it without my help, as long as I was there, hovering, to make sure the cup didn’t end up in her lap. Now she is so good at it that I can give her the cup and leave the room, feeling pretty confident that she won’t spill. Of course, now we are working on getting her not to tip the cup over when she has finished drinking, which is a favorite game…

The separation anxiety notwithstanding, she is quickly turning into a little girl which is so fun to watch, even if it makes us feel sad at how fast it is happening.

Emma turned 15 months old yesterday. At her 15 month check up (which was also yesterday) she weighed in at 21 pounds 12 ounces and was 31 1/2 inches long. It didn’t seem like enough growth to me, but the doctor assured me that if she kept growing on her previous trajectory, she would be 700 pounds by the time she is 10, and that she is fine. I said ok.

In the last month she went to the National Building Museum with her friend B., had a visit from her Aunt Lexi and went to the Museum of Natural History with her, had a few play dates with E., went to Tryst for brunch with her Aunt Jocelyn, hung out with frogs at the National Geographic Museum (quite the month for museums I guess!) and watched her parents lose their MINDS over the 2008 Democratic Primary.

She loves going to day care, and they seem pretty fond of her as well. We haven’t take the plunge and added a day yet, but we are still strongly considering it.

The two biggest changes in the last month have been in her climbing and her speech.

She has decided that the most fun she can possibly have is to climb up into the armchairs in our sun room. She runs over to them giggling, and scrabbles on the seat to hoist one leg up and then the other. Every so often she looks behind her to see if we are watching and when she sees that we are, she gets a sly little smile on her face - as though she is doing something forbidden, even though we have never told her not to climb the chairs. When she finally gets herself onto the chair she stands up and grabs the back of it and laughs as if we are chasing her, which we aren’t of course.

We are actively discouraging the standing up part, since she could fall backwards. Also, at 21ish pounds she is not going to cause too much wear and tear on the seats but as she gets bigger we don’t really want her thinking standing on chairs is cool, or we will be buying new furniture every year. The other day I found her sitting in the chair reading. Really one of the sweetest things ever.

The other thing that has shifted this month is her speech. As I said last month, I have had just the very teeniest tiniest slightest amount of concern over the fact that she doesn’t say anything besides “Mama” and “Dada”, but I have been able to keep it pretty much under control. In the last month, really the last couple of weeks, although there are no new words, she has gone from what I would call “babbling”, to “chattering”. She holds entire conversations with us, or by herself - whatev - and has an amazing amount of variance in her expressions, both vocal and facial. Almost to the point that I feel a little stupid for NOT understanding her, because she is so clearly saying SOMETHING.

She also seems to be trying different combinations of vowels and consonants a lot to see how they sound together and also to see whether her parents jump up and down like morons when she hits certain combinations. She says “ess” a lot - could be “yes”, could be “moose”, could be “s” (but why really?) Just yesterday she started making an “O” with her mouth while stretching her nose out (kind of the opposite of scrunching her nose up, which she also does), but no word followed. Just the “O”. I know what you are thinking, but no, it isn’t her attempt at “Obama”, for that she seems to be working on rearranging all the syllables - “ma-o-ma” or something like that - again, nothing so clear that we can say “YES!!! OBAMA!!!!”

So there are all sorts of funny experiments going on with her face and mouth but no clear words, not English ones anyway. I really think that she is just the type that likes to get something right before she does it for real, and that all this practice with her language is going to come to fruition one day when we walk in the room and she lets us know the solution to the whole Florida-Michigan delegate debacle. Either that or she is going to shout “Moose, shut the f*@% up!”. Good times.

She learned the sign for “milk” this month and thankfully the loudness I complained of last month has morphed into her chatter which is so much more fun and pleasant to be around. Her new favorite book is “Hop on Pop” and now in addition to loving the Obama pins littering decorating the house, when we ask her “where’s Obama?” she looks down at her shirt to see if the button is there. She also beams with joy when we show her Senator Obama’s speeches or the will.i.am videos. Such a smart girl.

Obviously life with Emma just gets more and more fun and more and more joyous every day. How did we get so lucky?

Update: How could I forget? Emma also got two new teeth this month, her bottom molars, the very front ones. Are those even called molars? Dunno. Anyway, she has ‘em.

It’s hard work being a kid. It’s hard work being a mom too, but really, I think it is still harder being a kid. I watch Emma every day, learning how her body works, learning that everything around her has a name, learning the difference between playing gently with the dogs and playing hard with her toys and learning that the world has rules, even though she may not always like it. I watch her soak up new information and process new experiences every day and I am amazed at how much work it obviously is, that she is able to learn so much so fast and that she is ready to start fresh every morning.

Emma turned 14 months old yesterday. When she hit about nine months old, I felt like something shifted in life with her. She became more aware and more excited about what was happening in the world around her and it felt like we entered a new phase. This past month has felt very similar. Mike and I have had more of those “Whoa, did that just happen?” moments in the last month than I can remember ever having.

Last month, Emma started dancing by bouncing her knees when music started. This month she took her dancing to a whole new level and now has a routine that I am pretty sure is worthy of the next season of “So You Think You Can Dance”. She twists and turns and even, dare I say it, gyrates a little, even getting her arms into the act as she waves them overhead. I have hours and hours of video of her walking around the house with music in the background. I keep shooting in the hopes that she will start dancing so I can share it with you. So far I have only gotten snippets, since as soon as she sees me videotaping her, she stops and comes over to see what is going on. I will keep trying though.

The thing that has amazed us the most in the last thirty days though is Emma’s new ability to understand and process language. I wrote in her 13 month update that she was starting to follow simple directions. Now she can follow two part directions - “Emma get the bear and take it to daddy” and when we ask her questions she understands what we mean and lets us know her answer. When we ask her “Emma do you want to go to bed?” she nods and walks to her room, turning around to make sure we are following. It is mind blowing.

She has also started being really LOUD lately. She screams and shouts and yells “EH EH EH”, and not always out of frustration or anger. My theory is that she is testing the range of her voice and when she does seem frustrated it is because she can’t communicate what she wants. Or she’s just plain loud, which is always a possibility. Whatever the reason, it makes me crazy and leaves me wishing for her tiny little newborn cry.

She still isn’t talking, which as a new parent of course I sometimes wonder about, but she understands language so clearly that I am not too concerned. The doctor assured me at her one year check up that some kids don’t talk until 15 months, and I didn’t say my first word until 18 months, so I haven’t started googling “delayed speech” just yet.

Her signing is going really well, even if her talking isn’t. She can tell us when she is “finished”, when she wants to “drink” and when she wants “more”. That last one is key - it’s how we get her to stop yelling about wanting more food and just tell us. She has sort of created her own version of the sign for “more”, but she knows what she means and we know what she means so we don’t correct her. She appears really delighted each time she signs it and she actually GETS more - as if she can’t believe how easy it is to make us do what she wants, and let’s face it, it is.

She brought home her first piece of art work from daycare this month, which proudly went up on our fridge. She also had her first visit from her Uncle Andy and Aunt Alyson this month, and went with them to the National Museum of the American Indian - her first of many trips there I am sure.

Her favorite books are “Goodnight Gorilla” and “Bear Snores On”, some her favorite foods are feta cheese, bananas, eggs and yogurt and her favorite new game is Torture the Cat, which we are working on discouraging. She loves the Obama pin I wear on my coat and has one of her own that she carries around with her - we are still hoping Obama will be her first word. She is funny and smart and snuggly, and truly everything I could ever hope for in a child.

Except for that yelling thing. Really hoping that is just a stage.

I wrote a few days ago about how excited we are in our house at the outcome of the Iowa caucus. What I didn’t write about is all the other things that have happened around here in the last week.

On Sunday Mike and I won our Fantasy Football league championship - for the second year in a row. Sweeet! Seeing as it is also only our second year playing fantasy football, we were pretty psyched. Of course now no one in our league is speaking to us, so maybe we would have been better off throwing the game.

On Monday we bought a new car. We got the Mazda5 in Redskin Red (ok, the dealership calls it “copper red”. Whatever.) and we are in love with it. It is zippy and has zoom zoom and doesn’t make me feel like a soccer mom. Not that there is anything wrong with that, it’s just not where I am at this point in my life - give me a few years though. You had to be a contortionist to get Emma into her car seat with our old car. Now I don’t even have to bend over. W00t!

On Thursday…well, everyone knows what happened on Thursday.

On Saturday Emma turned 13 months old.

She had her first day of daycare this week. It was a half-day really, so we could ease her into it. Yeah, I know, it wasn’t to ease her into it, it was to ease me into it. She didn’t even cry when I left. By contrast, I was a mess. They do art projects and go on fieldtrips and play outside at the daycare, which will be really good for her since I seriously think she may be bored with me at home. Of course now I am going to have step up my game on the days she is with me or she is going to start asking to go to daycare every day.

Emma had her first real playdate this week too. It was with a little boy who is almost exactly her age. We went to his house and she was a little more restrained than I expected. To be fair, E. was flinging balls at her head a lot of the time, so maybe she was just figuring out how to get home alive. Neither of them have gotten to the “sharing” stage quite yet, so there was a lot of parental intervention required. We had a good time though and E. and his mom will probably be coming here in a week or two.

Emma started twirling this week. She looked up at me one morning and then started spinning around in a circle until she got dizzy and fell over. She laughed the whole time. I have no idea where she learned it (daycare?) but now when I say “Emma, twirl!” she spins and spins. It is a riot.

She continues to love music and uses her knees to bounce up and down and dance. She is a great eater and so far has not shown an aversion to particular foods that I have read so many toddlers develop. Speaking of toddlers, she has had a couple of full blown lie-on-the-floor-and-kick-your-feet type tantrums which were amazing to behold. The tantrums were short lived and luckily we were at home, but we are really hoping they aren’t signs of the “terrible twos” coming a little early.

Her only word is still “Da” for her daddy, but (terrifyingly) she seems to understand a lot of what we say. She follows simple directions like “go get your Bear” or “sit down in the bathtub”. Oddly, it seems for some reason that when we say “don’t touch the dog food” she hears “please pick up that very full bowl of dog food and dump it all over the kitchen floor”. I guess we should have her ears looked at…

I continue to be amazed at how much FUN it is to have a little person to hang out with. It’s the part of parenting that not a whole lot of people really talk about. Mike and I could sit and watch her play and dance and laugh for hours and hours, and once she starts talking? Fuhgeddaboutit.