It’s been a year.

A year, and two months, and five days.

Today before bed, she just wanted to read books. She’d walk over to her bookshelf (yes, walk—she’s walking now) and pick a book and bring it to me, and then turn around and back into my lap, settling into the little well in the middle of my crossed legs, and lean back into me as I read the book. And, of course, she would turn the pages before I could finish reading them, and she would skip pages, and flip backwards, and close the book, and get up before we read the whole thing together. She’d get up and go to her shelf again. I’d keep reading aloud while holding up the book, because sometimes she would turn around and be intrigued again, and she’d walk closer and listen and watch while standing nearby, or sometimes she would crawl all the way back in my lap. If it didn’t intrigue her enough, she would bring over a new book and insist I take it and we would start the whole process over with that book. We did this with probably 20 books in 45 minutes.

Her hair is so curly in the back now—the little bits that tuft over her ears flip up in curls now too. Still too short to put in any tiny pigtails, but long enough to brush with a comb and ruffle and smooth with our hands (which we do often).

She is so good at saying and repeating words. Mama, Dada, Nonna, nana (for banana), kitty, duck, hi, okay, uh oh, yay. She approximates many others. She signs and says all done and more.

She is so beautiful. Her lashes still long, her eyes dark and twinkly, her eyebrows elegant, her cheeks rosy, her lips pink and pouty (especially while she’s concentrating). She has so many teeth! Two on the bottom and four on top. I was worried that her teeth would look scary when they came in, but they look as cute as ever, and her smile is still the best thing in the world.

She smiles and squeals and crouches and hugs herself when she gets excited. She loves when we run around her, and she tries to run too. She loves chase (“I’m gonna get you!”) and she has the best belly laugh when you grab and tickle her and snort near her neck and belly.

I am truly living out all of the adorable cliches of parenting a baby. Truly what I always dreamed. I am so lucky.

She pushes food onto the floor when she is done with it, clearing her place setting. But we are trying a new thing where we ask her to put the food she’s done with in a bowl, and that seems to be working well to avoid the food ending up on the floor; she sure does love putting things in things. She says “all done” by waving her whole hands at the wrists up in down, like she’s doggy paddling. She asks for more, bunching her fingertips and tapping both hands together, although sometimes she keeps one hand flat and taps her fingertips to her palm—a common deviation among toddlers, apparently.

She hates changing her diaper. She does not like to hold still for long. She must be kept occupied with something in her hands that is interesting enough to hold her attention for three minutes. She has lost interest in the mini toothpaste, the Neosporin, the diaper paste, the diapers. She needs my watch, or a pen, or something else that worked well today but that I can’t remember and will rack my brain trying to tomorrow while she tries to sit up while crying. I ordered her a mini potty today so we can start trying that. I recently let her down from the changing table before putting a new diaper on (since she has not peed on the changing table in months), and she immediately walked over to her little cloth chair, sat down, and peed on it. Despite feeling stupid for allowing this to happen, and exhausted at the thought of cleaning it and putting it back together, we think this is a good sign for potty training.