She's growing up so fast and we love it .... most of the time

Last year was a great year filled with Lilo firsts – rolling over, sitting up, crawling, standing, and walking – all great and amazing to see how life works. Seeing Lilo physical and mental development over the first year has been truly incredible.

All of a sudden, we've entered a whole new world of firsts.

Now that Lilo has the basics down, she is developing her own personality - and it's a hoot to watch. In the first few weeks of 2007 she has done a great number things for the first time - some good, some bad - and sometimes it seems like she's learning new things everyday:

● She lets us know when she’s wants to go to sleep by shaking the gate on the stairs that lead up to the second floor, and her bedroom. Sometimes it’s just an 'I want to climb the stairs and play' thing when she does it in the middle of the day. But later in the evening, its a sure fire sign that she’s tired.

● She waves goodbye. This isn't necessarily new, as she learned how to wave well before Christmas - but now she does it at the right times, and without being prompted. When I drop her off at daycare and she waves goodbye to me, it makes my day.

● Lilo's giving out the high-fives like an NBA bench player. This is one that daddy taught her and she'll even yell out “Yay” when she slaps your hand. This weekend she put on one of daddy’s big gloves and gave us all high-fives. Hilarious.

● Memuna (her daycare provider) taught her to blow kisses. While she hasn’t mastered this yet, it’s so cute to see her try. She really just smacks her face, then finds her mouth and says “mma” when she pulls her hand away.

● She plays with the baby doll she got for Christmas, a lot. She feeds her the bottle, wraps her up in a blanket, and takes her for walks in her stroller. So what if the little doll is upside down, with no shirt on and one leg hanging out the side of the stroller. It makes her seem like such a little girl and not a baby when she does that.

● One day when daddy was getting Lilo ready in the morning, and put her down on the floor of her room, and turned his back to fetch some clothes out of the dresser. When he turned around, Lilo had climbed into the rocking chair, and was feverishly rocking back and forth. This goes along with the whole new climbing skill, which has been a challenge in other areas. Lilo's gone vertical!

● She's a dance machine. Lilo has a couple of singing/dancing toys which she now loves - and she likes to dance along with them. It’s so cute to see her bounce up and down as she does the monkey dance with “Boots.”

● She's a maniac driver on the Diego cruiser. See the post below.

● She's also started to ride the zebra we got her for her birthday. She used to just play with music and lights on it but now she likes to hop on and ride and will even push it up closer to the tv so she can watch and ride at the same time.

● Lilo's a baller. Every night, she grabs her big purple ball whenever she sees it and comes over and throws a perfect Steve Nash-bounce pass to us. Ok, so she hasn’t figured out the catching yet and a lot of the time her aim is really really poor, but she is good at fetching.

● She’s climbing. She figured it out how to get on the table this past weekend, in an effort to get closer to the TV were daddy was playing football. Now she climbs up by herself all the time. Do you know how disturbing it is to turn around and see a small child standing on a coffee table?

● She puts my purse on over her shoulder/neck and walks around like a big girl. It's hilarious, because the purse, or bag, or whatever just drags along the ground behind her.

● She LOVES helping us put away the groceries. This is definitely a favourite pastime, and she giggles with joy when we show up with a load of groceries.

It's an interesting phase when your child's abilities exceed her common sense to know what's a good idea, and what's maybe not so smart. It's certainly all very exciting - though perhaps a little frightening to think of what will come next...