17 Months Later

Hazel was full of personality today which I thought was ironic since it also marks 17 months since she was born. It's like this whole time her true personality has been laying low and today it all came out. It just keeps getting better and better.

I think she's going through a growth spurt. She doesn't seem to be sick, yet she slept 13 hours last night and still took a 3+ hour nap. Plus, she's eating tons of food. She will dance/walk in circles and make herself dizzy. Sometimes she falls, sometimes she doesn't. She loves books and will say book or read and bring me a book to read to her.

Dan was over all day helping in the yard and Hazel learned his name. She now says, "nan!" and begs for him to hold her and "read" her books. She also started saying broccoli and it's the cutest little thing. (Actually, I can't decide if she's the cutest little thing or rather the things she does are the cutest little things. We sure feel blessed and happy.)

Hazel is so very happy. She throws little tantrums here and there, but she is mostly mellow and happy. I've actually even been able to brush her teeth lately without her screaming the entire time. She has lots of smiles. One of my favorites is when it looks like she is smiling as big as physically possible. It's like she is so excited/elated/happy she can hardly control herself. Another is her small smile, no teeth showing. She just looks at me and smiles and a peaceful, calm, reassuring feeling surrounds me. She reminds me more and more of Jason, especially with that smile. I guess one calm person in my life isn't enough to keep my crazy self in check.

Months ago, Hazel started saying yes (well, she'd nod her head dramatically with big eyes and say "yeah") when she wanted to say yes and grunt if the answer was no. Recently she has started saying "no" (with a very accentuated, round "ohhhh") to everything. If I say, "Say yes if you want ..." she'll say yes, and she actually says "yes" with the s now. Tonight we laughed at her and now she thinks it's funny to say no. She'll say "noh" and look at us and wait and laugh her awesome fake laugh.

I've been doing an experiment with her. (Poor little lab rat.) She scratched her nose and I read that Frankincense helps prevent scarring. She has a little scar on her cheek from scratching there. It's faint and I'm sure it will fade as she grows, so I'm not worried about it, but if I can prevent it, why not? Anyway, so 3 times a day, I put a little dab of Frankincense on Hazel's nose and she laughs. She thinks it's hilarious.

She's taken a shower with me twice this week. She gets a little cold, but when I hold her up to the warm water, it paralyzes her. She just relaxes with her head on my shoulder, the water hitting her back, not moving a muscle.  I set her out with a towel around her while I dry off. Today she walked away from the towel and peed on the floor. I told her to tell me next time she needs to go potty and we can go on the toilet. It's pretty cute when she says potty. It'd be cuter if she actually said it to go on the toilet.

She says "ews" for shoes. I'm not sure if it's because she can't say shoes or if it's because I say eww all the time when I have her shoes because they stink so, so bad. She loves shoes, by the way. I am trying to organize all the clothes in storage and in doing so, I got out a bag of shoes that she'll be wearing soon. She has tried all of them on and loves bringing me a shoe, climbing in my lap and saying please, in hopes that I'll put the shoe on.

We have an eency weency spider book with little plastic spiders. She pokes them and says, "eww". She can now open doors with a handle (as opposed to a knob). There goes my child proofing. Usually I'd just keep all the doors shut. She blinks and it always makes me laugh. She giggles a lot, especially when I pretend to eat her neck and/or or belly button. I love her cheeks the most. I can't kiss or squeeze them quite enough.

She loves to explore and is very busy. Today she was really quite just for a second (she was on the other side of the island, so I was in the kitchen with her, just couldn't see her) and I turned to see her sitting in a puddle of water she'd dumbed out from a big water bottle. Recently she also got into my 5 gallon bucket of oats and sprinkled them all over the pantry. She loves to get things out of my bathroom drawers and cupboards too. A few days ago I was scrubbing the shower with a toothbrush and she got one of Clara's toothbrushes and came to help.

One day last week my mom had an appointment that ran late. I needed to go to work and after dropping Clara off at school, went to my mom's to wait for her to finish. I got to sit and play with Hazel and enjoy some rare one on one time with her. She usually naps when Clara is at school, so it's not often that it's just her and me. We played with play do, read books, explored in the front and she swung on the swing by herself for the first time (well, as far as I know...).