It's fun watching Lydia grow and seeing which aspects of her personality are like mine and which are like Brent's. From me she gets her incredible impatience. Sorry to see that I passed that on! But this child hates to wait for anything, especially food. If I put her in her highchair and do not have food to her within .3 seconds, I will hear about it. We continue to insist to her that we WILL feed her, we promise, but this does not seem to help at all.
Another, perhaps slightly less unpleasant personality trait I seemed to have passed on to my daughter is a sense of caution.
Kim noticed this when we visited earlier this month. Her son Micah would barrel all over the house, tumbling as he went. But Lydia is more precise and careful with all of her movements. She is good at what she does, but does not venture into new territory until she is sure she can master it. I fully believe this is the reason we still have not been able to get her to walk more than a couple of steps on her own. She can stand flawlessly, without so much as a wobble, but when encouraged to take a step I can see her little mind processing. She considers it, but still does not feel she can do it perfectly and thus opts to crawl instead.
I never thought much about this tendancy of hers until recently, but it dawned on me that she is anything but daring. We haven't had to deal with many trips, spills, bumps, or bruises because Lydia doesn't do anything she isn't confident she can do successfully. Even as I've seen her go to lean on something that is unstable, and family members nearby get nervous that she will fall, I know she'll be okay. She'll test it out first. If she senses it isn't sturdy, she won't mess with it. It's rare to see her topple over at all.
In some ways I'm glad she has this trait of mine. It may keep her out of some sticky situations in life because she will take the time to cautiously assess them. But at times I wish that I wasn't so analytical and could just throw caution to the wind and enjoy things. But it is what it is and it is fun to see reflections of myself in my baby girl.
It's also fun to see some of Brent's personality coming through in her. Lydia is definitely laid back like her daddy. She isn't sensitive about things and there isn't much that she doesn't like. She does not at all seem to be a crazy emotional girl. We'll see if this changes some as she gets older, but as it is now she doesn't cry much unless she gets hurt and isn't shy at all either. She doesn't care where we go as long as we let her have something to play with, she'll happily ride around in the car all day and sleep or stare at the scenery out the window, and generally speaking she is not clingy to either one of us. Every time I worry that she'll have a hard time with a change (like when we were weaning or when we changed our morning routine), she isn't phased. I'm always impressed by how easily she handles whatever it is that we decide to do.
Just a quick note about other recent Lydia developments: She has picked up the word "Lala" as the name she gave to Elmo. She somehow knows the letter E and will pick it out of the sea of bath letters floating around her if asked to find it. She says "Dada" in reference to ducks... "duck duck" perhaps? She is also getting better with the words "fish" and "crash" (which we say whenever we knock over a stack of blocks). Lydia gave me kisses on the cheek for the first time the other day (made me cry too!) but refuses to do it again for me or for Brent. She is NOT a touchy-feely girl! She will point to her toes, belly, head, hair, and ears, but despite my efforts to teach them usually will not point to her eyes, noes, or mouth. If I ask her to point to anything on her face, she tends to just point to her ear. As smart as she is I don't get why she won't do this! I think she's doing it to spite me. :-P She thinks it is hilarious when anyone makes a horse noise, and the other day she appropriately called my mom "Nana", even with no bananas in sight!
She is the love of my life and I can hardly imagine what it is going to be like to have another one! It will be cute overload for sure!
