Happy 1st Birthday

Oh Delma, you are a whole year old today. Our little baby is nowhere to be seen, in her place is a force to be reckoned with, a fascinating little girl who is learning so much every day that we can practically hear the sizzle and pop of little synapses firing and forming in your brain.

You've always liked taking things out of things, like emptying my bag, pulling tissues or baby wipes out of their containers, taking books off the shelves, etc. But in the past month you've started putting things into things, which provides opportunity for many funny discoveries, like finding a binky in your drawer in the kitchen, finding a stuffed animal in your shape sorting bucket, finding your shoe that you took off and put into a little bin at school, etc. You also like to feed us, putting your little bits of dinner into our mouths, though you don't understand that we need to chew and swallow before you can put more food in. The devil's in the details.

You used to like to play with books, but now you'll actually pay attention while we read you a whole book. When we used to read you books, you were more interested in grabbing them and playing with them and wouldn't usually let us even read a whole page start to finish unless we held on tight to the book to fight off your grabby paws. But now you'll bring a book to us and will pay attention to every page. I could cry now just thinking about it, my daughter someday loving books, spending whole rainy days reading and rereading Judy Blume books and Bridge to Terabithia, or whatever books blow girls' minds these days. There's a whole beautiful amazing world in books and I can't wait for you to discover it. But for now, I'm happy to read you the little Mary Engelbright Mother Goose books over and over, so we can join in with the dog who laughs to see such sport in Hey Diddle Diddle.

You can understand and follow (when you choose to) directions now. You're like some little robot, we have to very carefully give you simple, explicit and short directions, like "Don't put your rabbi puppy in your poop." Because you have a little puppy dog wearing a yarmulke and a tallis and you put him right into the poopy diaper I had just taken off of you. But more often we just tell you to pick things up and put things down and hand us things over and over because we think it's so cute. It's just so cool that you can understand what we're saying to you. I wish you were more interested in trying to speak to us too -- though you're very verbal, you don't really have words yet that you use consistently. I think it's too early to worry about that, though.

You love music so much, and now you dance a little too. You'll rock back and forth, sometimes with your hands up in the air, or you'll do the classic toddler bouncy dance. We don't know where you got the rocking thing, and they don't know at your daycare either. Maybe it's primal, maybe you saw someone do it once, who knows. All I know is we're pleased to have another baby trick that we can make you perform for guests.

Thank you for the best year, baby bunny rabbit. Daddy and I think that raising children is probably like marriage: if you can survive the first year, it's smooth sailing from there on out. :)

Happy Birthday!

Love, Mommy