Your body might not be growing very quickly, but your personality certainly is. You have evidenced a stubborn streak and a temper, which nobody who knows your family is surprised by. Your father will tell you that it all comes from me, but don't let him fool you.
Your favorite activity right now is drawing. You draw with crayons. You draw with pencils. You draw with markers. You draw with sidewalk chalk. You draw on the magnetic doodle pads. You love to draw. You started out making lots of straight lines, but you've moved on now to actual scribbles. You love the sidewalk chalk so much that I started keeping it on a shelf where you could get to it yourself. Then I discovered that in a place where it never rains, sidewalk chalk never washes away. After scrubbing the driveway off by hand, I made you start drawing on the part of the sidewalk that gets watered by the sprinklers instead.
You've started wanting to do lots of things for yourself. You like to dress yourself, or bring us clothes that you want to wear. You like to put on necklaces--you'll put on a whole handful of bungee cords at one time. You want to feed yourself, with predictably messy results. Or, not: one night that we had spaghetti, you grabbed a noodle and tried to put it over your head like a necklace. That was unpredictably messy.
You have started doing some funny walks. You walk on your tip toes. You walk backwards. You take big, slow, stomping steps, which makes Grandma laugh and laugh. You are good at going up the stairs now, but you can't seem to decide how you want to go down the stairs. Sometimes you go backwards, but sometimes you sit down and scoot your butt down one step at a time.
Your hair is straight in the front, but curly in the back. It makes me wonder what it will be like when you're older and it gets thicker. I remember my mother and I struggling with my hair when I was a child. I hope that you and I (and Dad, too) are able to deal with your hair with less pain and aggravation.
Speaking of pain and aggravation, you've had a bunch of teeth come in. You have four teeth on top, now, but only three on the bottom. It looks like one of your bottom teeth is stuck behind a tooth that was already there. I've made you an appointment at a pediatric dentist, so we'll see what they have to say about it. It doesn't seem to stop you from eating; you still eat all the time. If you see someone sitting at the table, you want to eat with them. You'll open up the cupboard where we keep dry and canned goods and bring us the raisins or a granola bar to open for you. One day, you got a box of crackers open by yourself, and you would take out a cracker and then go sit in the back yard and eat it. Arrow kept following you, back and forth, from the cupboard to the yard, waiting to see if you'd let him eat one, too. One day I was watching you eat fried rice and I said to Grandpa, "She doesn't look Chinese, but she eats like she's Chinese!"
We did some fun things this month. We played at the beach at the Santa Monica Pier. You were too young for the rides or games, but you had fun chasing the pigeons. You chased the pigeons at Griffith Park, too, while Corbin had a pony ride. You did get to go on the train ride there, and the carousel, too. You weren't too keen on the carousel. We weren't sure if it was because you didn't like the motion or if the ride was just a little too long. When we went to San Diego,you seemed to enjoy the zoo, but you really loved the pool at the hotel. You wore Grandma out wanting to jump in. You liked it when I swished you around in big circles. You have always liked to play in water, so it wasn't a big surprise that you liked the pool. We're definitely going to have to put you in swimming lessons when you get older.
You are trying to say a lot of words these days. Mostly, you're imitating what we say, which is fine and we can mostly understand it. But sometimes you'll just come out with a stream of word-like sounding babble, and then we all wonder if we're supposed to have any idea what you meant. One of the funnier phrases that you've picked up is, "Big eyes," which is what we say when we're making faces at you: "Big eyes," and we open our eyes as wide as we can; "Little eyes," and we squint up our eyes and lower our eyebrows. Every time you do Little Eyes, it makes us all laugh. I said once that if we ever have you in a day care or with a baby-sitter, we're going to have to warn them about Little Eyes, otherwise, they'll think you're frowning at them the whole time.
This month has not been an easy month for me. You will learn as you grow up that I worry about things. I like to have a predictable life, which I can plan for and which runs smoothly. I am not good at waiting for other people to do things that affect my life, so the combination of interviewing for jobs plus having our Minneapolis house on the market has not been fun. But my cousin Sharon gave me a good piece of advice: she told me to enjoy the time home with you and Corbin, which was a good change in perspective. I do love spending time with you, even when you sit in a puddle and then sit on my lap.
Love,
Mom
You love to draw:
Remember last month, when I said that you put all of your farm animals in the car carrier semi?
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