holy harriet

Did you know that I have another child?
Poor little second child.  Always the forgotten one.
We never call her by the right name.  We forget to teach her stuff like "sooo big!".  We don't check on her milestones that were so important with the first one.  We wake her up from precious slumber often because the older one needs to be taken somewhere.  She wears mostly hand me downs and has only a handful of toys and books that are just for her.  She eats all her baby food from jars even though the first child's was all homemade.  She doesn't get bathed nearly enough.   There is no Wiggleworms or Gymboree or special playdates thus far.   We finally got around to getting her baptized, only about 6 months late.

In spite of all this, our Harriet is the happiest, sweetest, friendliest, little girl with the biggest personality around.  She has brought so much joy to this household there is no way she could ever understand how much we love her.

In the blur of all the things that are always going on around here, Harriet managed to teach herself a few tricks.  When the whole family was over this weekend for her Baptism, she put on a show of all her newly acquired material.  It went a little something like this:
Sit up.  Smile and show all 7 of my teeth.  Wait for laughter.  Crawl to something.  Sit up again.  Look cute.  Clap hands.  Hold for applause.  Shake head from side to side.  More applause.  Try and try to stand up. When that doesn't quite work, go back to the clapping and the head shaking.  Big smile.  Wave.  Repeat.
She repeated this sequence, or something very similar, about 30 times.  I could have watched it 30 more.

Time is going by so quickly with Harriet.  All of a sudden she is into everything and all over the house.  I had barely gotten the baby gates back up.  She tries to open the oven and climb onto the dishwasher.  She is the Roomba I have always wanted and cleans up all the food on the floor (and probably some leaves and dust bunnies and, who am I kidding?, a coin or two).  She is like a magnet to any electrical outlet and chews on cords of any kind.  She can't be left alone for 1 second.  Was the first one like this? I blocked it out if she was.

I try and try and try to slow her down, her movement and her growth, both are impossible to do.
 I always think of the line in one of Eloise's books,  Clifford the Small Red Puppy.  When Clifford, the soon to be Big Red Dog, is a puppy and he keeps growing into his future huge self,  Emily Elizabeth says to him, "Clifford, stop growing!  You're perfect just the way you are!"
My sentiments exactly.

sitting

crawling

clapping

being cute

standing