Keeping up with the Dirks: A Year And A Half

It's coming up on 18 months with little An-Bon! It seems like there's something new with her every day. She is good at trying to repeat what we say, such as simple one- or two-syllable words like apple, bubble, and turtle. She tries to do the song motions with me to "Itsy Bitsy Spider". She can point out most of her body parts if we ask "where's your nose? ears? eyes? hair?" A couple of times she has put a shoe on by herself. Even though they're velcro, I was pretty impressed! More teeth are popping through too, so she has 7 or 8 now.

The word "no" still hasn't quite sunk in, depending on what we are telling her not to do. Although she does mock me sometimes when I say no. She'll crinkle her nose, squint her eyes, and point her finger at me while saying "no" in as deep of a voice as a toddler can have. It actually made me laugh the first time, but then I started to wonder if I looked like that in her eyes when I said no. Now I try to look nicer :)

Many of our friends have just had babies and to see their photos and hear their stories makes it seem like so long ago that we did all that with Ani. Hours may drag on during the day, especially with a newborn, who basically eats, sleeps, and poops. But the days and weeks fly by. I don't miss getting up in the middle of the night to feed, that is for sure, but most times I enjoyed it even though the sleep deprivation about made it impossible to haul myself out of bed and walk to her room. Such tender moments - their little bodies all snuggled up against you. Maybe this is why I still sometimes rock her to sleep!