catching up

as i opened up my blog to write,
i noticed two things about my last post.
i wrote it a full two months ago
and
that is also how long it has been since i last took a dance class...

i have been busy
living in the moment
enjoying the warm weather and everything that comes with it

while i made a point of taking m outside every day since she was born, she was either too young or it was too cold for her to really be able to appreciate most of the pleasures that come with going outside until recently

now that spring has arrived and already left (it was 84 today) we have taken many hikes with the dogs -
we have gone to the playground mostly to watch big kids play
we have gone over early to bubby's house for family meals so that she could play with a push toy in the grass- from one day to the next she went from never having taken more than a single step forward, to pushing that thing up and down the yard like a mini gardener mowing her lawn

it has been amazing to watch m grow and develop into a person with personality.
she desperately wants things, fights for those things she wants and has a death grip that will not budge when you try to take that thing away from her.

she will laugh uncontrollably if you tickle her belly, her armpits or her feet but mostly just under her hips.
she will also laugh uncontrollably if you say or do something funny, because she has an incredibly sophisticated sense of humor (that's what i tell myself when i am making funny faces through the car window at her while pumping gas)

for the past five months she has reached for me whenever i was in the room. now she starts to reach out of my arms for other people.

sometimes she squints when the dogs come to slobber all over her face and other times she dives off the end of the bed (i grab her feet) to greet a dog's face with her own in delight.

indeed i have fallen behind in my blog posting and have been trying merely to keep up with the present