Home Sweet Sarah

Well, LG turned one year old a little over a month ago and I figured it was high time to get my thoughts and FEELINGS out there.

Her thought? That the Princess Cozy Coupe is AWESOME

As if you had any doubt, she remains one of my favorite people ever and she has officially solidified her spot in my small circle of trust (even if she does rest her keppie on her dad’s shoulder when he holds her, whereas when I hold her, she tries to push me away.)

She’s doesn’t walk yet (which I know you all know, but for some reason, in most peoples’ worlds, one year = she must be walking, but no, she’s not.) She has no interest in walking and has altogether stopped standing, which she used to do if we’d prop her up on the couch or her music table, but honestly (honestly), I am not worried and I also don’t care.

LG is a lot like me in that if you tell her to do something, she’ll just do the opposite. “Fuck you and your ideas of what I’m supposed to do and who I’m supposed to be!” In the words of her dad, “I do what I want.”

What I want is to hold her like a baby, but she’s having none of that

Side-note: I don’t know when Chris first said this to me — I certainly wasn’t asking his permission to do anything — but whatever it was, he responded with, “You do what you want!” and I thought, “Yeah, I do!” And so does he. And so does LG. And somehow what we all want individually is what everyone else also wants and so it works. (Well, there are probably a lot of things LG doesn’t want or does want, but she’s one, so she can’t really have an opinion about anything, now can she? Except standing. She is firmly in the no standing camp.)

Despite that, she seems to be fairly on-track everywhere else. Eats anything and everything, still. Steals other kids’ food at daycare. Stole her cousin’s sippy cup of juice at a family reunion in San Diego a couple weeks ago.

I didn’t even know she really could drink out of a sippy cup, willingly at least, until she stole the juice. And then after all my, “She only drinks perfectly-temperatured milk!”, she drank ice cold milk at a rest stop on our drive home.

It was crowded, the three of us driving nine hours in that thing…

I am finally realizing that everything I think I know about her is wrong…That she’s much more sharp than I give her credit for…That perhaps my “baby” is not, in fact, a baby any longer, but an actual kid with thoughts and opinions.

In the words of MTV’s Diary, “You think you know, but you have no idea.” (Diary: LG Edition coming to an MTV2 near you.)

Poor little plum has a wicked molar coming in, which despite looking bloody (sorry), hasn’t seemed to tamper her spirits at all, as she still goes about her daily biz acting like nothing is wrong.

And, well, that seems to be LG in a nutshell: “I’m going to take this tooth and I’m going to tell it what’s what and then I’m going to crawl over here and chew on your flip-flop and oh, look, I can climb the stairs! You suckers think I can’t stand, but I caaaaaan!”

She now sleeps on her stomach and wakes up pretty suddenly when we go in there to look at her/pet her face/pat her tushie before we go to bed. She takes her baths in the actual tub and splashes around like nobody’s business, even holds her breath when we pour water over her head.

Her hair has started to curl at the ends and it’s SO ADORABLE. Is there anything better than baby curls? I do not believe so.

I am dying

They teach the kids sign language at school and before we leave in the mornings, I’ve noticed her signing “eat” sort of subconsciously. Then we when get to school, she KNOWS it is breakfast time and starts squawking from her car seat. She actually reminds me a lot of a neurotic cat I had growing up, Ivey, who we rescued and believed to have been separated from her mother too early. Ivey’s first meal at our house consisted of moo goo gai pan and I don’t believe she ever stopped eating after that. She’d bleat for hours on end if her food bowl got too low and, well, I just compared my child to an animal — I WIN AT ALL THIS.

All in all, she’s a happy girl. Always has been and I hope she always will be. Hey, if that’s all I do as a mother — raising a happy kid — then I’ll consider myself a success. And comparing her to a cat can’t hurt, either.

The last couple nights*, LG has been somewhat…how do you say?…SPIRITED. I don’t know if it’s her teeth or just general I’m-almost-one-and-life-is-so-HARD growing pains, but woo-boy! She’s gone to bed completely refusing to eat (I KNOW) and literally pushing herself away from me when I try to hold her.

The worst part is that once in her crib, she chats and laughs and babbles and it’s then Chris and I realize she just…Doesn’t want to hang out with us.

“Why doesn’t she like us?” I wonder.

“We’re nice people! I mean, not really, but we’re nice to HER.”

I’m sure there are just all sorts of developmentals going on right about now, as we hit the one-year mark (IN LESS THAN TEN DAYS) (HOLD ME), so I’ll try not too take it too personally, but it’s hard to be away all day and then come home to a baby who’d rather chill with her paper mobile than, you know, THE WOMAN WHO GAVE HER LIFE.

SIGH.

Anyway, she recently started crawling. She had mastered the sit ‘n scoot awhile ago, but it wasn’t until I brought her to work with me, where we have wall-to-wall carpet (as opposed to home, which is primarily wood laminate and tile) that she actually booked it, one-knee-in-front-of-the-other style.

Lock up your sons (or daughters, not that there’s anything wrong with that), heeeeeeere I come!

She’s also started to clap, which you can see in the below video, as well as wave. She waves to herself — I’m guessing is because that’s what she sees when we wave at her — and  it’s basically the cutest and she can keep doing that forever.

I’m not adept at video embeddiment, so if that doesn’t work, click here.

The start of Passover was this weekend and she thoroughly enjoyed her first matzoh ball:

No, really, she gobbled that shit up.

And then Sunday was her second Easter (she was four days old last year!) and she had cat!

That’s Tab, the cat who adopted us. He/she makes me NERVOUS when he/she’s around my BABY, but he/she doesn’t really like LG very much, so he/she never sticks around for long. He/she is either a he or a she, we’re not too sure/don’t care/just scare off all the birds that try to eat my tomatoes and we’ll be cool, Tab.

We’ll be putting the finishing touches on the kitchen this weekend (I say “finishing touches” because we’re going to be finishing the kitchen, but make no mistake, this will be the largest chunk we’ve done yet, oh yay) and also sometime planting the garden (WHEN?! There’s no time!) and then LG’s birthday party is next weekend.

H-O-L-Y.

M-O-L-Y.

Last Friday afternoon found Chris and I both off work early, so we did what any person in their right mind without a child would do — we went to a dive bar and then to Costco. We also pre-ordered LG’s birthday cake on a whim from a local cakery.

The girl at the counter asked if we wanted anything written on the cake (a 4-inch “smash cake,” which this girl knew was for a first birthday), to which I replied, “No, she can’t read yet.”

“Heh,” said the girl.

Hey, sometimes, when you’re totally rejected by your sweet baby, you have to take what you can get.

Fine, fine, I’ll give it to you this ONE TIME, lady.

*I drafted this post at work. Naturally, when I got home, LG was as sweet as could be. It’s like she knew she was breaking my balls.