As Long as She Stays Away from The Yellow Variety

Life has gotten in the way of the blog I’m afraid; hence, the lag in updates. The week of Thanksgiving I came down with laryngitis and bronchitis, which I’m only now starting to come out of. That really threw me for a loop. But everyone else managed to escape the misery. Jack has been busy ripping out the downstairs bathroom as he prepares to renovate it. It’s slow-going because his time is limited when he has to watch the baby in the mornings. He took the week of Thanksgiving off to get a start on it, and it’s coming along. We’re fortunate he can do the work himself.


Brigid has been growing and changing before our eyes. Her vocabulary has just exploded and her personality is emerging. She’s outgoing and chatty; she loves to be praised and enjoys being applauded when she says the right word for something. She repeats words you say as if to commit them to memory. She certainly understands way more than she can verbalize herself. Her climbing has continued to be a source of entertainment for her and frustration for us. She disappeared for a scant 10 seconds the other day and we found her sitting in the middle of the dining room table. She’ll try to scale the built-in bookcase in her room, she tries to climb on the computer table or the coffee table, flitting from thing to thing.

She knows the names of the people in her life and enjoys saying her sisters’ names especially. She adores them and plays with them non-stop. She also loves her Auntie Shell. The other day at church when Michelle was walking by for communion, Brigid saw her and reached out for her. Michelle kissed her and continued on her way; Brigid started crying uncontrollably. When Michelle came around the other way to comfort her, she didn’t want to come back to me. Michelle had to stay in the pew and hold her until church was over.


Yesterday we had our first real snow of the season – all three inches of it – and they closed schools. The girls and Daddy had Baby B outside for a while, and all she wanted to do was eat the snow. Patricia and I took her out for a few minutes after I got home from work and again, all she wanted to do was eat the snow. But she loved it, and she ran around and enjoyed her new “boo-oots” (she makes many one-syllable words into two-syllable words). She didn’t want to leave her mittens on, so we have to return to our arsenal of tricks we used when Margaret and Patricia were her age to keep them on her hands.



Last night she did something that was very cute and very grown up. After I got her in her pajamas, she ran around a little and then disappeared into her room. I heard her in there, yelling out “chair, chair” (we have an easy chair we call “the big chair” in her room where we read or nurse) and “mah mah mah.” I went in to find her sitting in the chair in the dark waiting for me. I nursed her for a while and then she indicated she was ready to go in the crib. I put her in and she snuggled for a moment but I thought “Uh oh, she’s not going to let me get out of here” because she stood up, but she wasn’t crying. She wanted her “Ruff” – what she calls a dog. I handed her the stuffed dog and told her to lie down, which she did without a peep. A fluke or developmental milestone? We’ll find out tonight.