A Perfect 1

It’s funny how perspectives change from one child to another.  When Nathan was one, I’d bristle when people referred to him as “the baby.”  He wasn't a baby anymore, he was Mommy’s little boy.  But Amanda will probably be 30 years old and we’ll still be calling her “the baby.”  She’s cuddly, loving, and independent, and she seems to relish in her role as the baby.  And yet she’s in a hurry to catch up with her siblings.  She perfectly copies how they hold their crayons when they write or draw.  She demands to feed herself, which results in Mommy and Daddy using every trick in our baby-raising toolbox to get the food down her rather than on her and still allow her to be part of the process.  Then there are the days when her desire to be a big girl is bigger than her ability, and it’s a day of meltdowns and temper tantrums.  Some days it’s great being the baby, and some days…not.

Amanda has entire conversations with her sister’s dolls and her own stuffed animals, complete with head bobbing and eyebrow raising.  Though we can decipher only half of what she says, the dolls obviously understand every precious word.  When she wakes in the mornings and calls for her Daddy, he is greeted by the clearest words of the day, “Good morning” or “coffee.” With those words and her beautiful smile, she knows the way to her Daddy’s heart.  

She loves books every bit as much as her siblings.  She sits in my lap every evening enthralled by the pictures and the story, safe and warm and snuggly for bed, and in the morning she brings me her book(s) of choice and crawls into my lap again for endless sessions of pointing and naming, and sometimes for a repeat of last night’s bedtime book.  

Somehow, somewhere Amanda went from the first tenuous steps at 14 months to dancing in only a heartbeat.  When she figured out that movement upright offered lots more mobility and speed than crawling, she never looked at the floor again.  

And she LOVES music.  She has remarkable pitch, sings on cue and on key, and then adds in a jig or waltz for good measure.  What a little character.  Our little character.  Perfect in every way, and celebrating being one every day.