fifteen months

dear claire,
month 15 was amazing. hands down, best month so far. first of all - you are a toddler now! toddling around like a drunken munchkin. you also have feelings.... lots of them. lots of dramatic feelings and you make choices, dramatic choices. and you sometimes feel so many feelings at once that you short circuit. soon you will be old enough to communicate and then you won’t violently burst into flames every time you have feelings. am i making sense? ugh.TANTRUMS - u haz dem.

we had quite the eventful mother's day weekend. mother's day morning we were playing in the living room and you got up and walked into my bedroom. as i was walking through the hallway following you in there you turned around and slammed the door. it was locked. there is no key. i frantically fussed with a bobby pin for about 5 minutes before i lost my shit and called 911. there are so many things in my room you could've killed yourself on. i was so scared. hysterical. i would have kung fu'd the door down myself if you hadn’t been sitting right behind it. it was really traumatic, for both of us i'm sure. 5 firemen came and rescued you. i held you and gave you a bottle and i cried a lot. if you ever do that again.... you are in so much trouble. that was the scariest 10 minutes of my entire life.

then after your nap you and i went to mother's day brunch. you were not in a great mood so i left you have about half a can of cheesy poofs to keep you from releasing the screams of displeasure upon all of woodland hills. you like cheesy poofs. then my omelet came and you wanted a piece. you put it in your mouth and gasped in excitement of the eggy delight. the omelet piece shot to the back of your throat. red, purple, blue, as i was grabbing you out of the high chair to do the heimlich you grunted and the piece of omelet flew about 5 feet across the table. you get an F for mother's day behavior. try harder next year please.

on a less deadly note... you are walking! like for reals big time walker baby. you are so brave. you fall a lot, sometimes hard... and you just get right back up and keep going. you are not very graceful, but you are tough. we celebrated your first steps by buying you lots and lots of cute $hoes. oh if only you were old enough to appreciate them. in the meantime i will appreciate them for you... in the dark... when our power gets turned off because i spent all the electricity bill money on size 4 infant adidas.

on to your funny new tricks. this month you learned some fun things. high five. touchdown. shaking your head no. screaming "all done!" you can locate a dog or a ball no matter where we are. you looked your nana in the eye and exclaimed "POPPA!" for the very first time. you climb stairs. you run. you drink from a straw. you've scared the jesusmaryandjoseph right out of me on several occasions by: standing up in your highchair when i turn my back, digging through my purse until you find a xanax and attempting to put it in your mouth, hitting your head on various tables, walls, chairs, floors and dishwashers, the afore mentioned 911 morning and heimlich afternoon, sleeping for four hours longer than you normally do (they say it's because you're getting molars... but i know you were just trying to make me wet my pants when i woke up at TEN IN THE MORNING and you were still silent in your crib), getting into the dishwasher and throwing a wine glass at my crotch - shattering it on the kitchen floor, throwing a potted plant across the kitchen at your nana's house, various fevers, rashes, erupting ear drums....

which brings me to my next story. TUBES. June 3rd you will be getting tubes in your ears. it only took the doctors 10 ear infections and 2 ruptured ear drums in 4 months to decide you need them. don't even get me started. anyways, i'm trying really hard not to go on the internet and research my way into hysterics. practically everybody has tubes. RIGHT? right. it takes like 15 minutes to put them in. it's an outpatient procedure. you won’t even know anything happened. the downside is that i have to leave you in a scary hospital room while you lay there knocked out cold from general anesthesia for 15 minutes. i might need to bring a "special" sippy cup for me to enjoy in the waiting room... i'm kidding.... no, i'm not. so i hope the tubes make you better. you pronounce "doggy", "DUH JOO" and i though i wanna think it’s a cute claire accent, i'm pretty sure it's cuz you can't hear a damned thing. you'd better come out of that surgery speaking in complete sentences. ok, thanks.

this month held a huge milestone for you as far as i'm concerned. no, not the walking. better than walking. loving. this month you've begun to show love. you used to only want me to hold you if i was going to give you food, or if you were scared, or tired. but now sometimes you will stumble over to me and give me a big hug just because you feel like it. you'll wrap your little arms around my leg and look up at me and smile. you love me and you know it. it's been so amazing watching this part of you grow. you are a compassionate and caring and loving little girl. it's unbelievable that you are the same tiny baby who was too small for preemie diapers. it's going by way too fast. right now you hug my knee, soon it will be my thigh, and then my waist... then the day will come when we'll hug heart to heart. i want you to know that throughout all the changes our lives will go through, the one thing that will never ever change is my love for you. no matter how high you hug, you will always be my baby girl.

love you back,

mama