My Life as Recorded by Mommy

I threw a temper tantrum about broccoli tonight.  But perhaps not your average seventeen-month-old's temper tantrum about broccoli . . .

Tonight when mommy handed me a plate of spaghetti and broccoli, I wolfed down the broccoli instantly because I love it.  I asked for more, but there wasn't any more because mommy had divided all the broccoli amongst everybody's plates and mommy and daddy had also eaten all of theirs.  I tried to grab my brother's broccoli, and when I wasn't allowed to do that, I attempted to throw my plate down, even though it still had spaghetti on it.  When mommy successfully foiled that attempt of mine, I stood up on the chair, threw my fork down on the table, stomped my foot, gave mommy stink-eye, and then turned my back to my whole family.

I've been up to a lot in the weeks that I have not been posting.  I went to a cottage and learned all about lifejackets (which I hate) and boats and swimming in cold Ontario lakes.  I walked with granny in the woods and collected little natural treasures which we put in my cousin Oliver's Spiderman tackle box.  I picked flowers and took walks and ate lots of yummy food and played with baby Iris and smiled my charming smile and slept in a laundry room and tried to take part in everything that the boys were doing.  Very busy!

But that's my life these days.  Except for when I'm sleeping, which is at least fifteen hours of the day, or intent on eating, which is a good bit of time, too, I am busy trying to figure out this world that I live in.  Mommy, daddy, Benjamin, and I make up the center of the universe.  That much I've figured out.  I'm still working on the details of how the others--granny, Oliver, Iris, Poose, Aunt Kristen, grandma, and papa--fit in. 

One of the ways I learn is to study my brother.  What he does, I do.  If he colours, I get a book and marker of my own and colour too.  If he does a puzzle, I find one to work on too.  If he makes nasty snakes that wriggle across the kitchen table out of his spagetti noodles, I make them too.  If he runs to mommy shouting 'me, me' in response to her question of who wants to help clean up toys and then get a cookie, I run yelling 'me, me' too! 

While Benjamin is the epitome of coolness in my universe right now, mommy is the center of comfort.  'Mommy' has become the word I choose when I am trying to express that I want something to make me feel better.  It doesn't have to be mommy--bunny, a soother, granny, or daddy might work just as well--but I have confidence that mommy will be able to help me find whatever it is that I need.

And my daddy?  Well, my daddy is my DADDY!  He is my hero.  He is warm and strong and cuddly and calls me his little girl.  And he can fix things for me.  When I need the cap pulled off a marker, he's the only one for the job!

I'm getting four new teeth in, all at the same time.  They are nice big ones!  The better to chomp with.  Currently, my desire to chomp has decreased, though, because my gums are sore.

In other news, I talk a lot.  And I trot, too!

My brother and I found my mommy's stash of borrowed toys (therefore new to us) which are going up to the cottage we are renting with my cousins in a couple weeks.  Mommy let us each pick one outfit to dress up in.  Don't you think I make a grave Knight Templar?



I may be small, but I am mighty.

My vocabulary (that mommy has been able to figure out) at fifteen-and-three-quarters-months-old (translations provided as needed):

mama
dada
yeah
guck:  duck and truck
gar:  car
goo-ga:  cookie or cracker
ba-ba:  banana
ba:  Benjamin/brother
ba:  bunny
gin:  again
gat:  cat
da:  dog
at:  hat

I answer yes by nodding and saying 'yeah' or, occasionally, 'da'.  I answer no by shaking my head, but I haven't said no yet.  My comprehension is fabulous.  There are few commands, even multi-step ones, or questions that I don't understand!

Yummy, yummy popsicles!  How cute am I, by the way?

Well, I've been beating up on myself some more.  Yesterday I got a bruise on my cheek.  Today I gave myself a bloody nose.  Being as busy as I am is difficult on the face!

My mommy and my brother made 'goo-gas' during my naptime, and I was pretty excited about that when I got up!  I wanted about fifteen of them, but mommy is stingy when it comes to doling out cookies, in my opinion.  Apparently, I have adopted the same early pronunciation of the word as my brother--so mommy immediately knew what I was talking about when I asked repeatedly for more goo-gas.

I've decided to become shy.  I'm selective in my shyness, however.  It's not that I need mommy near or have separation anxiety, or that I am relunctant to try something new, it's just that I don't care to be the center of attention.  I prefer to have everyone's attention focused elsewhere so that I may do my observations of and interactions with the world unobserved.  Except in my own home and with my family--here I do not have any shyness.  I am Super Susannah the Fearless, and I have the bruises to prove it!

I take a beating these days, being on the go as much as I am.  Yesterday I fell in our laneway and skinned my knee.  Today I skinned my shin on a rock in the backyard.  But the worst was the terrible, no good, awful, horrible fall I had this morning at the park.  I was trotting over to the metal see-saw, where my mommy and Benjamin were playing together, and just as I arrived there, I tripped over my own feet and fell, mouth first, right onto the see-saw itself.  Mommy rushed to me, scooped me up, and when I opened up to utter the first ear-piercing cry, a mouthful of blood came out all over mommy and me.  It was unbelievably horrible.  Everyone at the park rushed to me and mommy to help take care of me, offering clothes and ice packs.  It took a little while, but I eventually got up on my feet and played for a little longer, as my bottom lip puffed out bigger and bigger.  It wasn't long before mommy and daddy decided that they should take me home and give me some Tylenol and put me to bed for a nap (which I fully supported), but as a special treat (and to make my mouth feel better) we stopped off at a new ice cream store on the way home.  I got to share with everyone!  Benjamin was super sweet about letting me have every other bite of his cone.

Here are a few recent pictures of me!  This is me and Benjamin sharing the ice cream cone.  I'm wearing the hat that granny gave me that gets a million compliments a day.  You see a mixture of blood and ice cream all over my jacket.



This is a picture of me on the go.  I like to carry something in one or both of my hands most of the time.



This is me with a (pre-accident!) 'don't mess with me' expression while on the swings.



In other news, mommy got me a doll stroller for my baby doll and I am being a very good little mommy these days.  I like to take her for walks, undress her and demand help in getting her dressed again, cover her with a blanket, and give her a bottle.  I even put her to bed in her cradle before I went upstairs for my bath today.

I had my fifteen-month checkup today.  I weigh just under 24 pounds, and I am just over 30 inches tall.  That puts me at about the 70th percentile in weight, and around 35th percentile in height.  The doctor said that maybe mommy should start giving me two percent milk now . . .

Other than possible weight issues, I'm doing supurbly!  I can show you where my nose, eyes, ears, hair, head, mouth, teeth, and belly button are.  I know that cows go 'moo' and snakes go 'ssss' and bees go 'buzz'.  I chatter away constantly, and although people might not understand me perfectly, I have purpose to what I say and I find ways make sure that I'm understood!

I can't get enough of playing outside in my sandbox and my cottage.  I don't care if it's raining or windy or what the weather is like, I like to be out there in the fresh air.  But today my mommy brought up our cardboard box kitchen from the basement (we have a stove and oven and refrigerator that mommy made out of diaper boxes, you see, and periodically it goes on vacation to the basement for a while) and we had a lot of fun cooking.  I liked to have a dish towel thrown over my shoulder as I baked.

Wanna know a secret?  I kind of like my big brother.  We've been playing together a lot these days, so he's really starting to grow on me.  Mommy gave me a picture of him, and I carry it around with me when he is at school.  Or I keep it in the storage compartment of my little airplane.  Or I take it in and out of the storage compartment over and over and over again.  Anyway, I like to have that picture near me whenever old Benjamin can't be near me.

Yeah, he's pretty cool, I guess!

I like to play with my brother.  We have more and more fun together.  My very favourite place to play with him (or by myself, for that matter) is outside in our cottage and sandbox.  I could be out there all day!

I am a head nodder and shaker.  I still don't use my words, other than 'dat', 'mama' and 'ah-da', but I let you know what I want by my pointing and my head nods and shakes.  I am excellent at answering yes or no questions.

I am a drawer, too.  I only like markers, though, and I don't like to be limited to paper.  I need more mediums to express my artistic vision.  Walls, furniture, toys, and my clothes are lots more fun to draw on than boring old paper.  Since I tend to get very angry when my attempts to draw everywhere with the markers are foiled, the markers have gone on vacation for a little while.  Our easel downstairs also has gone on vacation.  Mommy says they will return in a couple months when I can understand a bit better about the marker rules.  Right now far too much of my day is consumed by mommy redirecting me to the easel and then my having to redirect myself to the leather couch or the wall where I had been making a lovely mural.  In place of the easel, we have gotten an indoor tent with pillows and blankets and a very fun tunnel to crawl and play in.

I am a sick baby.  Sick, sick, sick.  I slept until ten this morning and then wanted to go back to sleep again at noon.  Nothing tastes good to me.  Not even watermelon.

I have vomiting, diarrhea, and fever.  Blech.  This is no fun!  Yesterday I at least had enough energy in the morning to play in my sandbox a bit.  Today I don't even want to go outside.

We went on a family bike ride tonight.  Benjamin and I went in the bike trailer behind daddy and we were squished in there like two little sardines.  But it was fun to tease and tickle each other.  Except when it wasn't.  Then daddy would stop the bike and give us a talking to about not antagonizing each other.  Then we'd go back to having fun.  For a while.

After the bike ride, mommy took me inside for my bath.  She was playing with me and she did this really fun thing where she leans over while holding me, so that it feels like I'm falling back (except that she's holding me tightly and I know that so I know I'm safe).  It's lots of fun and I giggle and giggle when she's doing it and when it's over I lean back suggestively to get her to do it again.  But tonight when I leaned back suggestively, I also did something else.  With no prompting at all, I looked up at mommy with my big brown eyes and tapped my hands together to tell her 'more'!

After getting frustrated with each other quite a bit over the last week and a bit, mommy and I have realized something important.  We can communicate with each other!  She might not understand everything I am trying to tell her, but just in the last two days she has gotten so much better that she can figure out most of it.  And as for me, I get the jist of things too.  These are just a small sample of the commands that I have figured out lately:

To go from the living room to the back door and find my shoes and/or hat.
To take a damp cloth and clean up the milk that splattered when I dropped my sippy cup.
To put up books, toys, clothes, etc at various times and in various places.
To stand up, sit down, walk, etc, as directed.
To blow my nose into a kleenex (this one really impressed mommy, since my brother only fairly recently learned that trick!)

I have said 'gat' for cat and 'daaa' for daddy and 'dat' as a general all purpose word sort of like 'that' but with more uses.  Those are the only actual words that mommy has figured out yet, although she is pretty sure that I have other words too.  She discovered the 'gat' by chance yesterday, since we were playing with a toy cat and I used the word about a million times until she finally clued in.

This is me all dressed up last Sunday for church.  This was supposed to be my Easter dress, but since I was sick on Easter Sunday, I didn't get to wear it then.  I got lots of compliments, as you can possibly imagine.  Daddy gushed over me like crazy when he first saw me all dressed up.  He picked me up and snuggled me and told me, 'This is how you become a daddy's girl!'

For most of my remembered life, I have stayed with grandma and papa.  Today they put me in the car with my brother and brought me to a house that is vaguely familiar.  This woman came and smothered me hugs and kisses and she seemed vaguely familiar too.  Then this man came and snuggled me and he seemed familiar too.

Slowly it all came back to me . . . I am back with mommy and daddy at home again!  Once I fully realized what was going on, I was happy to be home, although I did snuggle with grandma more than with mommy this evening.  I'm not completely sure about her yet.  What if she's not really mommy?  What if she decides to pack up and go to Italy again?  I have to wait and see.

Want the Susannah update?  I walk all over the place now, with no crawling.  I like to drink juice and milk now, in addition to water.  I still eat like a champ.  I have even more curls, but I still have only seven teeth.  I give kisses and hugs on demand.

Oh, and even grandma says that I am a 'true leftie'.  She admitted to mommy that she tried to make me switch to using my right hand, and I would always switch right back to the left.

I like to go to my brother's school on mommy's helping-out days.  I play right along with the big kids and I'm not fazed by them one bit.  I like to sit in chairs very much, and mommy often gets stressed at home because she thinks that I might fall down and bump my head (which, to be fair to mommy, has happened more than once).  I've taken another step toward independence today because while we were at Benjamin's school this morning, I taught myself to climb up on the kid-sized benches there all by myself.  Now mommy doesn't have control over when I can sit in a kid-sized chair, because I can do it whenever I want.  Unfortunately, I still haven't learned to get up on the couch or kitchen chairs unless there is something like a box that I can use as a step up.  That happened a few times, but it is not normally the case.

I am so sick, and I have been for almost a week now.  First I had fevers so high that they could hardly be controlled with both Advil and Tylenol.  Now I have the croup.  Daddy has been calling me 'Darth Zanna' and 'velocizannor' all day, with good reason.  I breathe like Darth Vader, and I squeak out a screechy cry like a velociraptor when I try to communicate.

I missed getting to dress up in my pretty Easter dress that Grandma bought me to celebrate my second Easter.  I didn't go to church yesterday.  Daddy stayed home with me and we cuddled and I wore my footed pajamas and clutched my Bunny and latched on to whomever would carry me (preferably mommy or daddy) all day long.  But I did manage to put away an impressive Easter dinner despite my sickness, and I ate an amazing amount of sushi for dinner tonight, too!  Daddy says that as long as I continue to eat and drink, I will eventually get better and I don't have to go to the doctor.

Also, I got to ride on a train with my brother and eat chocolate Easter eggs, so life hasn't been all bad by any means!

You know how I drive my mommy crazy?  By climbing into this great cabinet that she has in the kitchen where she keeps not only all her cookbooks (I love the shiny colourful pictures and great pages to crinkle) and her recipes (I like to dump them out) but all the craft supplies!  I like to take the pipe cleaners and the fuzzy balls and the foam paper and the construction paper and the stickers and spread them all over the kitchen floor!  Here I am, up to no good.



I don't know what I would ever do if mommy smartened up and got a baby lock on that cabinet!

On Saturday my brother had a party and Madi and Autumn came to play with us.  They set up my dollhouse for me and they gave me rides on my train and airplane!



In other news, wanna see my curls?  This is what happens to my hair when it gets wet.

My brother got a toy drill and it is so cool!  Tools and cars are the best.

(But girl cars, like Sally Car, are better than boy cars, of course!)

I like to do what big people do.  If you brush my teeth, I want to brush your teeth.  If you brush my hair and put it up in a silly Kewpie doll ponytail, I want to do the same to you--as I demonstrate in this picture where I am attempting to style Grandma's hair.



I've been drawing on our easel for a while now, and recently I started picking up pens and 'writing' in notebooks, just like mommy and daddy say my brother liked to do a lot when he was my age.  But this is my first drawing that was done entirely by myself.  I even chose the colours and when to switch crayons, so it is completely my composition.



In other developments, recently I've started to get a little stressed when other babies (like at the church nursery or at moms' group) hold my Bunny.  I don't say anything, or even try to grab her back, but I do notice and furrow my brows and watch that baby like a hawk.  Bunny is very dear to me and I can't let anything happen to her.