eighteen months

She's a year and a half old, which means we are as close to her second birthday as we are from her first. And I feel like her first birthday was yesterday. I feel so guilty sometimes when I think about how incredible the last six months have been and how I have been missing in action from her life from a lot of it. I have tried, I have run on little to no sleep if it meant that I got an extra five minutes to read her a story or to be there to watch her eat breakfast...even if it is from the couch, with her sleeping or nursing brother on my lap. In a lot of ways she's made me pay for deserting her. I know I have earned it, I know that she should be entitled to deal with this change any way she knows how but honestly, our last month together has been more trying and I have cried almost as many tears than I did during the first month of her life. That is saying something because I don't think I quit crying during that month. She's a daddy's girl now, always wondering where he is, spending her days standing at the door saying "Daddy HOME, Daddy HOME." She'll take me if she has no other choice when we're home alone and she needs a snuggle but if you ask her who she wants to read her a story or give her a bath or play Little People the answer is always the same: Daddy. I don't blame her and I am happy that she has a dad that has stepped up to be her caregiver, her friend, her one and only. I miss her dearly and I tell myself through tears over breakfast most days that someday, somehow I'll make it up to her. And I'll win her heart back.
 
We lost count at around 100 for the words she can identify and say and now we hardly even flinch when she says something new. She's started to refer to herself as Nae...pointing at her eyes and saying "Nae's eyes"...the word EYES said as though she's growing up somewhere in the deep south. It makes me smile every single time she says EYES.

She also learned the word NO and answers every question she is asked with a bored-annoyed-because-we-are-wasting-her-time NO. I guess I was sort of expecting a more aggressive No but really it's just No, not now people. No, I have not pooped in my pants for the sixth time today. I'm certain that if she understood the implications of rolling her eyes, she would be rolling them often.

Speaking of poop, she points at her diaper and says POOP now when she goes...which is sort of nice and has taken the guess work out of when she needs her diaper changed. And she does poop six times a day somedays. Becky at daycare told me a few weeks ago that Renee poops more than any kid she's ever had at daycare before. NICE.

She is still infatuated with her green polka blanket, now searching for two corners, one for each hand and when she finds them she brings them up to her nose, one over each nostril and inhales...almost like the scent of her blankie is the equivalent of snorting cocaine.
 
I made the mistake of buying her bath crayons at Target one day in an effort to make bathtime more fun because she went through a spell just after Cameron was born where she adamantly refused to take a bath. The bath crayons worked...almost too well because now she loses her shit the minute we say the word BATH as though she can hardly wait to get her hands on those crayons. And those crayons make the biggest mess of my tub that you have ever seen and quite frankly I don't have time to clean the tub as it is. I hate the bath crayons with the feiry passion of a thousand suns but can I take them away from her? No. And that, my friends, says volumes about my love for that little girl.

She LOVES playdoh and coloring in coloring books and still shows absolutely no interest in TV of any kind. Any TV that doesn't have The Jonas Brothers, that is. Driving home from Rama and Papa's after Christmas, I swear to God we listened to The Year 3000 no fewer than 30 times because she would scream her bloody head off if we turned it off. I have become immune to how terrible that song is. I almost don't hear it any more. You know how parents get immune to their kids screaming? Yeah well, I'm immune to The Year 3000. One of these days I'm going to get completely brainwashed and start liking it.

She ignores me flat out when I ask her to do something or tells me NO when I ask her to help me and I presume we are headed into the terrible twos. That's when they just quit listening, right? Yeah well, we're there. On rare occasion she'll surprise and do something I ask her to or she'll bend down with a sweet smile and give her brother a kiss for no reason. In those brief fleeting moments I think she might actually sort of like him. And I tell myself that at this point she probably has very little recollection of what life was like before he was here.
 
 
She still has that fire in her eyes and she still prefers to have both her dad and I in her sights at all times. Over the holidays, she roamed around my parents house saying Mama! Daddy! Baby! any time she couldn't see one of us for seven seconds. Flattering most of the time...completely annoying sometimes. She watches us like a hawk and if one of us heads for the bathroom she's there at our heels, making sure we're not going anywhere without her.

She's my big girl, my first-born, the keeper of my stars. She's challenged me more than I've ever been challenged before over the course of the last eighteen months. They call her difficult or whiney or clingy or spoiled but her mom? She wouldn't have her any other way.
 

Comments

[anne]

Do you think Renee and Ryan are destined to be soul-mates?? Because they sound eerily similar!! I've also lost track of the words he knows, he always announces his bowel movements as well, AND he's obsessed with a green blankey. If that doesn't have soul mate status written all over it, I don't know what does. Cute pics...and I love that flower dress she's wearing in the middle pictures.