To Paisley: Fourteen Months Old

Well, the biggest (and most recent news) this month is that you are officially walking! Yay! You are so happy to finally be able to go where and when you want and so proud of yourself. We went for coffee at a place called Coffee & Scream last week and that's where you started to walk. You had taken a few steps here and there but when I let you loose in the giant play area at the coffee shop you just stood up and started walking! I couldn't believe it! My friend said "Wow, Paisley is really good. How long has she been walking?" and I had to look at my watch because it had been about 5 minutes. Since then it has been all walking, all the time. You have this constant grin on your face and look so happy just to be vertical. As opposed to me who spends 16 hours a day vertical and just wants to lie down sometimes.



You are learning things at an incredible rate lately and every day brings a new adventure. Last month you conquered going up the stairs and now you can go down as well. Those two skills go particularly well together. You can open every kind of door or drawer and love to pull things out of the kitchen cupboards. Or at least you did until Daddy brought home one dozen large rubber bands and now the doors don't open. But they do make for excellent guitars. You laugh at jokes, have ticklish knees and will wave bye bye on command. You like to throw things down stairs or into the bath tub and I always let you. After all, it's fun.


The not so happy news is that we had our first fight this month. You and were hanging out in the bedroom playing around when all of a sudden you attached yourself to my nose with your teeth. Hard. I didn't want to scream in case I scared you and you bit harder so I yelled for your Dad to come. He came running in the room only to find his wife being mauled by a rabid toddler. He gave you a little pat on your bum which scared you and made you cry. I've never been so happy to have you cry because it meant you let go. I also started to cry. There we were, both bawling (me feeling my face to ensure I still had one) and your poor Dad didn't know what to do. So he laughed. Man did that hurt...the biting I mean, not the laughing.

You are no longer taking a bottle or any formula and are strictly on solid food. You like most things but don't seem to like meat. You're pretty good at letting us know what you don't like - if it goes flying across the room, you don't like it. You are a very good communicator. You point at things you want and scream or grunt until you get them. If you don't get it (because that thing you're pointing at happens to be a carving knife) you throw a tantrum complete with back arches, head banging and scratching/biting. It's an awesome thing to behold.


You are also down to only one nap a day now and it is working well for both of us. You seem to like having one long nap and it definitely gives us more time in the morning to get out and play. It also means that when you go down I can work at my other job as a writer. I have had a ton of work lately and it is sometimes a struggle to squeeze it all into your nap time, but I manage. I feel like we have both hit our stride and I'm happy with how things are going. You are a very busy girl who always needs entertaining and luckily, I am also busy and love nothing more than to make you happy. We are good together.

Love,
Mama