one and a half

My favorite offspring turned one and a half yesterday.

On her way to the playground the very second she turned one and a half.

She's been a busy bee in the last six months. She walks up talking and rarely stops unless she's being read to. A very small Sesame pronunciation guide follows*:

* This will be of interest to very few people

Mow! Mow!: More! More!
pops: popsicle
I shakey han/I holdy han: I shake your hand/I hold your hand
de-sing: dressing for whatever she's eating. Her favorites are blue cheese and ranch.
amil cackers: animal crackers
humpy dumpy: Humpty Dumpty

She uses the signs for more, please, cook, banana, turtle, again  and flower. She tries to do the letters with me when I sign the alphabet. I've been trying to teach her new signs but she doesn't learn them as quickly since she's started talking more.

She's just started getting to the stage where she says cute things. The other day she brought me a bottle of Powerade and said, "Read to juice, Mama". Now I can cross read Hop on Pop to a plastic bottle off my bucket list. She told me she wants to "huggy birds" at the park.

"Anybody home? Anybody home?"

She LOVES reading. She loves playing outside and coloring with crayons. She will make sticker pictures all day, every day. One of her favorite activities is unrolling the toilet paper. She enjoys counting "one, two, one, one, two" at random times.



She's getting so tall but is still a skinny Minnie. We brought four pairs of shoes with us when we left Tennessee and she outgrew three of them by the time we arrived here. She fit into the same 3-6 month pants for an entire year. They were pants last year and capris this year. It was almost like parting with a good friend when I packed them up.

She adores animals, especially goats and kittens. She loves when we visit the pet store. When we went to see the alpacas over the weekend she saw a flock of turkeys and said she wanted to "kissy the turkeys".

She's recently started watching shows and her favorites are Mary Poppins, Winnie the Pooh and her first great love- Minnie Mouse. Hours after I mentioned how she never tries to hum or sign she started singing, "medicine down, medicine go down" and "fly-y kite!" from Mary Poppins.



Last month Christopher showed her a video on youtube of mother cats caring for their babies. Something about the kittens and the classical music in the background brought her to tears. She wasn't upset. She was so touched that she had the biggest tears rolling down her cheeks.

Girlfriend loves food. She will eat almost anything. She loves snacks and asks for one every hour.

Much to my great sorrow she's started protesting bows.

Sometimes I still wonder when her mother is going to show up. When we're out, especially when we're visiting my family, and she needs something people will look to me and I look at them and wonder why they're all expecting ME to fix it. Obviously I've got this mothering thing down pat.