57 Weeks

Words, words, words. Words that sound like real words, words used in context. Shoes. Bunny. No no no. Book. Kitty. Dude. And of course, eyes. She is still obsessed with eyes. “Eyyyyyyes,” she says as she touches her own. “Very good!” we tell her. “Now, where are Mama’s eyes?” “Eyyyyesh,” she says, gently (or sometimes, not-so-gently) touching my eyelids. “Where are Daddy’s eyes?” “Eyyyes,” she says as she touches Ryan’s. We ask her to touch Daddy’s nose, Mama’s nose, Piper’s nose. She has about a 90% success rate on the noses, and maybe 75% when we ask her about mouths.

She can find her doll’s eyes, though, and she carries it around saying “Eyyysh….eyyyyes….eysh” as she pokes at its face. “Is that your baby?” I ask her. “Bee! Bee! Bee…a-beee,” she says, holding the doll out for me to kiss. We give her a stuffed bunny to play with in the car. “Is that your bunny?” we ask. “Bunny,” she echoes happily.

We’re really going to have to watch our mouths.

We upgraded her to the big-girl car seat recently. I was kind of wistful to see the carry-along infant seat go, but it was pretty useless at this point. It was too heavy to carry around without disturbing her (you try lugging 20 lbs of baby + 15 lbs of seat around smoothly), it was hot, and she was getting tired of facing backward. So we lugged out the Britax seat a friend gave us and belted it in forward-facing. She was thrilled to be able to see out the windows, and I think even more thrilled to be able to see us. We can turn around and see her now, and we always get a huge grin from her when we do. I can also stave off meltdowns by passing back small bits of cookie when I just need five more minutes, Piper, PLEASE, we’ll be there in five minutes, okay? Owing to the effectiveness of this method for distracting my car-hating child, a tub of Trader Joe’s Cinnamon Schoolhouse cookies now lives permanently under the front seat.