Mirror Image

It's so funny as my child grows I see more and more of myself. Sometimes, the not so flattering, sometimes the funny, sometimes the good stuff. We took Piper camping this weekend for her first time - more on that later.... As we were "pine cone hunting" I realized, once again, how observant my child is. After a couple of minutes and several miraculously appearing pine cones(NOT - there were about 15000 in a five square foot radius) Piper started saying "(GASP!) PINE CONE!!" The gasp was one of "surprise". I guess I was doing that to make pine cone hunting a little bit more exciting than it sounds. Not sure if that was for me or her.... Anyway, now everything is a miraculous appearance: "GASP! SHOE!", "GASP! STAIRS!". Ok, so maybe I try to make mundane things interesting with a GASP of surprise. Is that so wrong?

But sometimes, the mirroring tells you you're doing somethings right. Like when she looks at me and says "Mommy's eyes, pretty!". Awwww, melt my heart. I'm glad she knows what it sounds like to get a compliment. Or when she tells me she loves me without me telling her first. Or when she gives her mommy a kiss out of the blue. She is completely loved and now she's able to reciprocate a little, and that's nice.

It helps that her vocabulary is just booming at this point. She is really into naming possessions: ie, "Piper's shoes", "Mommy's shoes", "Daddy's coffee". She even makes up her own words sometimes. "Piper-sault" (Piper somersault), or "Piper-gurt" (Piper's yogurt). I see her daily and I can't keep up on all her new words. Her Dad and I often have to consult on what she means because one or the other will have been there when she discovered this new word or phrase.

She's also starting to sing. Well, it's more like chanting at this point. She gets the words, but not so much the tune. My friend Wendy, who is a beautiful vocalist, said that her son who is 18 mos is getting the tunes, but not the words. Well, as she said, "That's the difference between a child whose mommy can sing and a child whose mommy can't sing!" Yeah, mirrored again.

And does that child love to dance. She's got a new move. I call it her Bill Cosby move. You remember, the black guy who couldn't dance (or at least who's character couldn't dance). Ok, maybe mirrored again.

Despite the beginnings of temper tantrums and aggressive attempts at independence, this is still a fun and magical time. She makes me laugh daily. And a lot of the time I'm laughing at myself.