Skip to main content

The Willow Update, May 8, 2012

Willow got a kick out of having her very own
sandwich for lunch today.
We're only five days from Willow's first birthday, and oh what she has learned in the last couple of weeks. She's starting to look and act like a 1-year-old.
Willow's biggest accomplishment is she's taken off walking. I mean "taken off" as in a rocket ship heading to space. In a matter of weeks (it really seems like days), she's gone from creeping around furniture to almost running through the house (she's not running yet, but I bet it won't be long).
She never crawls anymore, and I don't think she's crawled at all today. She and I even walked, hand in hand, a bit on the greenway (Willow kept wanting to veer off into the rough part off the path while sourpuss Daddy wanted to stay on the path).
Here's some other things she's been up to (Warning: Cherish is in denial about Willow growing up, so tread lightly when you're around her; keep reminding yourself that Willow is just a baby and don't accentuate the toddler stuff Willow is doing):
  • Willow has started helping with dressing herself. You can take a shirt off while she's standing there, up right over her head, and you can put a shirt on her while she stands, given she isn't doing something. She even knows to put her arms through the holes.
  • Willow has started to give up her morning nap. This is in transition. Some days she skips it, some days she just takes a shorter one in the morning.
  • Willow is keen on putting things into baskets, buckets and drawers. I've found Cherish's and my shoes in the hamper, Willow's shoes in one of her drawers, odds and ends in the wastebasket and laundry in a decorative basket in the hallway. She even puts dirty clothes into the washer for me (but she usually takes them right back out).
  • Willow has started doing bigger-kid things at the playground. She likes climbing up the steps of the jungle gym. Today she and I went down the big, twisty slide at the park.
  • Willow lights up when she's around puppies and ducks. Sometimes she'll say "Doug," but I don't know if she's calling out for a man named "Doug," pointing out a duck or trying to get a dog's attention.
  • Willow has started sitting on the couch with Mommy and Daddy, but she doesn't like to stay up there long.
  • Willow is taking on bigger meals. Today she ate half a pimento cheese sandwich, all by herself, just took bites off it. She's also eating bites off bananas while she holds the banana. We've started feeding her chunks of chicken took (and pieces of Daddy's meatless meats, YUCK).
  • Willow has been drinking cow's milk from strawed cups. The transition from bottles to cups and from formula to cow's milk has been seamless.
She's been up to all sorts of stuff, but I think I've hit the highlights.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Adding a splash to the winter gray

Willow, Mommy and I went to the Y's pool on Sunday to take advantage of our membership and to do something summery in this dreary and cold weather. We had so much fun swimming and splashing, Willow and I went back on Tuesday. On Sunday, surprisingly, nobody else was at the pool, and the lifeguard seemed resigned to having to sit boringly in her stand. I have no problem with having an entire pool and a lifeguard all to myself, but, again, I was surprised nobody else was there, except for a few exercisers coming and going to use the steam room and the sauna (and a couple of guys hopped in the whirlpool for a few minutes). When Willow and I went on Tuesday, several people were in the pool, but they quickly scattered when the tot and I entered the pool. Maybe their time in the pool had come to a planned end. Maybe they didn't want to be in the water with someone who might pee or poop at any moment. After the initial scattering a couple of men came into the pool area and swam qui...

Among chaos, peace

I want to show you two pictures, but a little later. First I want to introduce you to chaos (or at least what I consider to be chaos) via a handy, dandy list: I am sitting at a laptop, pounding out a blog's letters as quickly as I can think of them. The laptop is only three months old, yet some of the keys stick sometimes. These sticky keys are the ghostly reminders that a toddler's sticky fingers have been pounding on them. Four loads of laundry lie in various states of "unfinish." One load is wet. One load is wrinkling. Two loads await their spins. A fifth load already has been tucked away in drawers, cabinets and closets (then untucked by a toddler then tucked again by me). Cups, plates and bowls hang for dear life to a hastily stacked pile of dirty dishes in the sink while a clean set of dishes sits in the dishwasher. A pile of pictures and postcards blanket the floor beside the desk in the guest room. This was the work of the sticky fingers that pounded on...

Summer zips on by

I guess it's official. This morning, we witnessed the kiddos hopping on school buses and heading to school. That marks the end of summer, I suppose, and the end of summer seems to come a little earlier every year (even though the actual warmness of the weather keeps creeping later and later; are we going to have winter this year, anyone?). Call me silly, but I like to think of the end of summer as that day on the calendar that falls in the middle of September, after my birthday (my birthday, Sept. 16, is in summer, but it has never, ever felt that way even though I know it's always hot on my birthday). This marks my 39th summer if you count that first one I was born during in 1974, and I'm sure many of them seemed really long or really short depending on how old I was. For me, it seemed like the summers of my childhood lasted FOREVER. Now it seems like they zip by. In a flash. Especially this one. It's been a busy one, filled with lots of travels, family visits and...