February 19, 2009

Dear Sarah,

While today is the twenty-first monthly anniversary of your birth it is also the one year anniversary of our first day at "learn how to be a parent" boot camp at Grammy and Grampy's house. A year ago yesterday we arrived in Portland and began our one week stay at your house finding out about your schedule, eating habits and way of life. Today is the first anniversary of the first day that we were a family. And I have to say, given that we are deep in the throes of trying to "schedule" your brothers - a schedule being something that happens more than ONE day in a row - how lucky we were to get a pre-programmed baby. I'm definitely tempted to ship Cole and Owen off Fed Ex for a few weeks of Grammy and Grampy training. We'll take them back when they're on a schedule, thank you very much.

This past month your vocabulary has started to explode. Your repertoire of animal noises is quite impressive, rivaling one of those wind-up pull Old MacDonald toy thingies I had when I was a little person. You do dog, cat, cow, pig, duck, fish, owl and sheep. You know over forty words - we counted! - or at least you have forty things that you say that I can discern as words that actually mean something. Your sentence structure remains primitive at best but you often add your favorite word - NO! - on to things so we figure that all of those phrases are really your first sentences.

You continue to terrorize your dog. This morning you came dashing into the living room splurting a lengthy diatribe in gobble-de-gook replete with finger pointing in Sophie's general direction and copious amounts of, "NO! NO! NO!" A loose translation of your nonsense is likely, "Mummy, the mastiff has pillaged my porridge!" You no longer had the bowl of Cheerios you had in hand minutes prior so my Spidey senses knew what had happened. Ready to put the dog in time-out for the rest of her days I asked you to show me with your pointer finger where the O's were. You pointer fingered all the way into the kitchen and right into Sophie's dog dish where you had deposited your Cheerios. The poor dog was just standing there dumb-struck at all of the fuss.

Interestingly, this month you have begun to be a little bit more cautious. While you used to jump off of any number of pieces of furniture with abandon you are now more likely to yell for help getting down. Sure, you still run around like a banshee in footie pyjamas, but you're a slightly more timid banshee. It will be interesting to see where this goes. I have to say, there is a part of me that likes that you grab onto my shirt and sigh contentedly when I pluck you from a chair that you climbed up on but didn't want to step down from.

You have incorporated a number of funny littler mannerisms into your being this past month. You will put your finger to your lips and say, "Shhhhhh!" when we pass our room and the babies are sleeping. Of course, your Shhhhh! is at high enough volume to wake the dead but you're at least trying to be considerate. You will also put your pointer finger (you have the pointiest pointer finger of them all, you know that?!) to your lip and say, "Hmmmm" when you're pondering something. It is seriously cute. You put both of your hands out palms up when you don't know the answer to something or don't know where you've stashed your treasures. And you blow kisses which is the cutest of all.

After a year together it is, of course, hard to imagine a minute without you. You have come such a long way from that little person who we picked up in Portland a year ago. I knew that I loved you from the moment I first saw you. Your Daddy first loved you when he told me that he wanted to bring you home. The most amazing thing to me is that over this last year, you have learned how to love us. And how amazing that is!

Love,
Mama