And Many More...

Last night, when I posted about Marta's birthday, I forgot to write a couple of things I know I'll forget over a lifetime and want Marta to know about her little self. 

1. She forces me to walk her around and around and around the house all day long, which is tedious enough in itself, but her favorite thing to do is climb stairs while walking (not actually climbing). I dislike it because a) It is stair climbing, and therefore working out, b) Detours us completely from even the possibility that I may pick up something along our path and put it away when we reach the appropriate place further down our path, and c) She can't even reach the next stair from the stair preceding it, so it's mostly me pulling her up by her hands and placing her on each stair. We go up seven, stop at Mosey's "perch," go up the next seven and then go down them all. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

However... her stair climbing, or stair climbing attempts, are absolutely adorable. She leads me over there and tries with all her baby might to lift her foot up as high as the stair. When she just barely makes the top, she rounds her chubby bare foot down to grip the carpeting, and sort of snuggles her toes into it for balance. Then she swings her left foot/leg up around (as I'm pulling her up, of course), straight out in the air to the side and all willy-nilly, and shoots her foot around rooting for the perfect place to set it down. 

2. The technical stuff: She's 22 pounds, and 29 inches long. 65th percentile, down from the 98th when she was about 6 months old. Her heart murmur is getting quieter and we're going to a new doc in GR at Spectrum Health/Helen DeVos Children's Heart Center for her valve. She's (and I quote) "far beyond a 1-year-old in intelligence." Well, duh.

3. She knows body parts, animal sounds and terrorizes her sister's many, many dollhouse setups that litter our house like Baby Godzilla.

4. Her hair, which started out a little bit dark and turned white-blond, is starting to look a little more ash blond. I note this because having two very blond, blue-eyed daughters is the main topic of conversation when Mom has dark brown hair and eyes. 

5. She loves, loves, loves dogs. It's ridiculously funny how much she loves dogs. And it's not because we have such a stellar dog ourselves -- Berit's a tiny bit terrified of Mosey. Marta just needs to read about, look at and sound like a dog during most of her days.