Tamara Like Camera

Ahh…this weekend just felt right in a lot of ways. It was my little sister’s bridal shower in New Jersey and it was a packed party! And the food was phenomenal. It was a day about “showering” my sister with love and I hope she really felt it. If she’s anything like I am, and I don’t want to speak for her, but I remember feeling really overwhelmed and yet not at all unsure about the man I was marrying. It was just…a lot. Love you, Marisa!

I also got to meet her fiancée’s (look at my fancy accent mark) family and it was like meeting old friends I already knew. I married a guy with great parents and she is doing the same. It really makes a huge difference.

Traveling alone with Scarlet is always a little overwhelming. This time around, I had a secret weapon for the car ride that I didn’t have before – cow’s milk. Man, she loves that stuff. She drinks it happily and then burps and acts giggly and drunk for about 1-2 hours afterward. This past weekend and always, I was astounded at the closeness I felt to my daughter. I have never spent one night away from her since she was born. I know my time is coming. Nursing is getting to be only once a day and I want Cassidy to have that alone time with her as well. It is precious. At night she slept on my chest and when everything was quiet I whispered to her, “What’s my name?” She whispered back, “Mama.” An hour passed and we woke up again. She looked around her at the unfamiliar room and held me closer. It grew silent and just when I thought she was asleep, she whispered to me, “Dada.”

She also stood alone for the first time at our friends Leah and Goose’s apartment last week. She did it again this morning with my mom. Before our car ride, I handed her a red ball and she looked at it and said, “Ball.” Another new thing is that I often say “I love you” to her while pointing to myself, then drawing a heart with my hands and then pointing to her. When we got home Cassidy said to her, “I love you.” She looked at him and made a messy heart with two hands! Seriously. Brilliant. One-year-olds are so interactive and amazing. I sometimes joke that I secretly think she’s animatronic because the combination of her cuteness, her jerky older baby/early toddler movements and her voice are just too cute to be real. So she must be like those animated robots at Disney, right? Right.

She also does this new thing where if she wants something, she holds her hand out to it, tilts her head, smiles and says, “glee, glick, glee” while making her tongue go in and out of her mouth. Today Cassidy was holding her and I came into the room. She looked at me, held out her hand, tilted her head, smiled and said, “glee, glick, glee” with her tongue poking in and out of her mouth. I think this means she wanted me.

And lastly, I was astounded and amazed by the evolving bond she has with my mom. It is seriously insane. It’s hard to say if the bond was built from seeing each other a lot the past few months, or if it’s something more. Something spiritual and ancestral – something I don’t even understand. All I know is that they are tight. Scarlet gets a little separation anxiety from anyone not me when she’s not home and she’s surrounded by strangers but she actually reached her arms out for my mom to hold her. She also saw my mom through a glass door and started pounding the glass to get her attention. As Marisa’s friend said, “She left baby handprints all over the glass!” The next morning when she woke up, she said, “Nana? Nana!” And when she saw my mom, she smiled and laughed.

And now I’m home with my Trader Joe’s coffee and my Trader Joe’s hummus and I’m feeling positive about the weekend.

So we took Scarlet to the Pediatrician for her 12 month well visit yesterday. All was great. She’s about 19 pounds and 29 inches. The doctor called her the healthy side of thin and also called her long and lean when considering her height to weight ratio. She asked us if Scarlet is talking at all and Scarlet started singing, “Mama mama mama” at that very second. I think she got her point across. I get very wound up by these visits so I breathed a huge sigh of relief when we left the office with our healthy girl.

I was very excited when we got home because my new lens was waiting for me on the doorstep. Here are a few shots taken with the new lens. It was very challenging to get Scarlet to stay still yesterday so I haven’t gotten as much practice as I would have liked. I’d also like to note that I’m not trying to be artsy in…any of these shots. It’s more that I still don’t know how to alter my camera settings to the new lens. And my kid would not stay still at all so she’s blurred out, ghostly, or has half of her body cut out of some photos. Not on purpose! Also, she’s wearing silicone gel sheets on her face. That’s just the way life is going to be for awhile. I might as well document the truth:

Oh, to have these eyes/eyelashes:

Looking at Grandma. Since half of her face is in focus, I call this photo “Two-Face” (my favorite Batman villain):

She has hair that demands to be in focus while her face is blurred:

Fun with Daddy:

And what’s this?? Two teeth! I don’t know why I thought starting her on teeth brushing would be hard. She loved it. In fact, she did it herself while I sang to her “Home” by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes and “Kid” by the Pretenders.

“I think I know,
Some things you never outgrow.”

Crazy, zany, blurry fun:

People often say, “She’s just too cute.” And I used to wonder how someone could be too cute, but now I get it. She is too cute. She’s too cute to let her go to bed at night and spend 12 hours apart from me. She’s too cute to leave her in the morning to go to work part-time. It does exist. One can be too cute.