Reflections in the Dragon's Eye: A Journal

No, I'm not doing another whole year-in-review. But I am going to give you a quick photo retrospective.

This was taken on her birthday, last year. God, she looks so tiny.

Here she is, at about fifteen months old. She still looks like a baby.

Eighteen months. She's starting to grow, but her hair is still short and her face is still baby-round.

BAMPF! All of a sudden, somewhere between 18 months and 21, she morphed from a toddling baby into a little girl. Maybe it's the growing hair.

Here she is, this morning. I had the damnedest time getting a picture of her, because she was playing this game where she ran, full-speed, between Matt and I, staying with each of us long enough only for an enthusiastic hug and (sometimes) a kiss. No, I wasn't complaining.

I can't believe how much she's grown in the last year. And not just physically. A year ago, she wasn't talking at all, was still drinking from bottles, was still unsteady on her feet, was still eating baby food. Now she's starting (slowly) to put words together, knows her colors and about a third of the alphabet and can count (with some prompting) up to ten, can run and dance and completely clear the floor when she jumps...

(Matt said last night, as we were eating dinner, "Two years ago, we were starting to move in on the home stretch of labor." I said, "Are you kidding? At 6:30, the annoying gum-smacking wench hadn't even gone off duty, yet.")

I'm hoping for a good day, and a good weekend. It wasn't an especially auspicious beginning, I'm afraid.

Penny woke up a little after 4, screaming and crying, and continued to scream and cry when I went in to try to soothe her back to sleep. After maybe ten or fifteen minutes, I turned her over to Matt, who at least managed to get her to lay back down.

But she woke up again at just a bit before five, and slept very restlessly until just past six. So I've effectively been awake since four.

And though she wasn't actively bratly this morning, she was very Daddy-daddy-daddy, so when Matt went upstairs to change, she whined a lot.

But Matt's taking the day off. He's dropping her off at daycare, then coming home to mow the lawn. Normally, it'd wait until tomorrow, but his mother's coming in to town tonight, and we'd like her not to see it looking like it hasn't been mowed all summer. (One week of rain, and suddenly the grass is threatening to eat the tree, I swear.)

Then he's going to meet me for lunch at Nawab, which is the Indian restaurant I like so much but that we haven't been to since before Penny was born. (Almost since I was pregnant, even, though we did eat there once in my early pregnancy, before the Spice Smackdown hit.)

And around 2:30 or 3, he's going to take a bunch of cupcakes over to daycare for Penny's school birthday party. He'll probably just take her straight home after the party, since the day will be nearly done anyway.

(So even though he has the day off, he won't be doing a lot of relaxing, I'm afraid. Poor Matt.)

As soon as I get home, I need to start work on the checkerboard cake. Everyone cross your fingers for me that it turns out okay!

We have no idea when Jill will arrive, though we're hoping it will be in time for dinner, or at least before Penny goes to bed.

Busybusy day. And tomorrow will be even busier, what with the party and all. But hopefully it will all be fun!