Well, it’s official. CootieGirl loves the stairs. Since Saturday night she’s been crawling over to the stairs and making her way up on a regular basis. At first it took forever, but now she can get to the top in about 30 seconds. She particularly loves when Cooper is at the top of the stairs waiting for her arrival. She squeals and goes into panic mode (”I must get up there NOW!”). Of course, we always stand behind her in case she tips back, but for the most part she’s got it down. Of course, she can’t GET down, but that’s for later, I suppose.

In order to avoid unsupervised attempts on the stairs, CootieDad is buying additional gates today to install at the bottom and top of the stairs. The cats are gonna HATE that (so is Cooper, for that matter, whose favorite pasttime is racing up and down the stairs when I get home from work). We’ve also added a few more cabinet blockers in the past two days because she now LOVES opening cabinets and spilling all their contents.

I guess it’s official: we have a toddler, ladies and gentlemen.

Our daughter is 12 months old, 52 weeks old, 365 days old – a 1-yr-old. Hard to believe – where has the time gone? I can remember my labor and her delivery like it was yesterday (complete with awful Whitney Houston musical accompaniment in the background during the c-section). From Day One she has been so much fun to watch, play with, snuggle with, nap with, and teach and learn from.

As of today, my 1-yr-old daughter:

CootieMom is going to be featured in a local newspaper in an article about moms of New Jersey. It comes out next Wednesday. The photographer for the story took hundreds of pictures last night and this morning of CootieMom and CootieGirl (and some of me too). We’ll see what they use. CootieMom was originally pegged for an article about NJ moms that blog, but they filled their quota for moms for that story before they got to CootieMom.

So on Saturday CootieGirl had a fever and was really cranky the entire day. By the evening she was really hot and refused to go to bed. She and I were laying on the couch, and she was generally having a good time with me, when suddenly I felt something warm on my chest and neck. Then I smelled spoiled milk.

My daughter had just thrown up on me.

It’s one thing to have a baby sort-of spit up a small bit of formula on your shoulder. It’s another to have a one-year-old throw up 8 oz. of whole milk all over your chest and neck.

CootieDad’ comment after I devomited myself by taking a long hot scalding shower a few minutes later? “Well, at least it didn’t get on the couch.”

CootieGirl and I may hate Bush but we are still patriotic.

I got the Belk’s ad today, and it’s most definitely not my child AT ALL. Oh well, at least she got paid for the work she did, even if they didn’t use it. So sad, though – she was finally going to be in PRINT after all these months of waiting…

This past weekend CootieGirl was playing with my cellphone (I had the buttons locked so no calls could accidently be made), and she at one point picked it up and held it to her ear, and covered her other ear with her hand and began babbling into the phone.

“Are you on the phone?” I asked, and she nodded (however, she nods at ANY question nowadays).

A few minutes later, she did it again – held it to her ear, covered her other ear and began babbling.

It’s obvious she’s seen me use my phone, as well as CootieDad (who has the same model).

I hope this doesn’t lead to marathon phone sessions when she’s older…

So Ace got the Belk’s ad from his friend. There’s a high likelihood that it is NOT CootieGirl. I never thought they might do multiple shoots of babies in the same outfits – according to the schedule I saw, they were only shooting that particular day in a particular order. I guess it’s possible that more babies showed up in the afternoon and they decided to do more shots, or it’s possible that they had multiple sessions on various days and went with the best. Right now I’m going based solely on a faxed copy Ace sent me a couple hours ago. I won’t see the original until I see Ace later this week.

Reason I don’t think it’s CootieGirl: She’s in a basket, surrounded by flowers, with a little African-American baby. I know for a fact she was sitting on grass, surrounded by Easter eggs. I honestly don’t remember the ethnicity of her partner.

Reasons I do think it’s CootieGirl: I’ve been told the baby IS redheaded, it’s definitely the outfit she wore, and the baby has “his” arm up in the air, which CootieGirl did for almost the whole shoot. Mare-Bear thinks they might have photoshopped her into a basket surrounded by flowers. I guess that’s possible.

We’ll see….either way, when I get the original I’ll scan it in and let you all see and either rejoice that she’s finally in print, or lament that she was re-cast by an actual boy.

Here are some cute CootieGirlpics we took this weekend while our friend Gladys was visiting. The bunny in the last pic was an Easter gift from other friends Meredyth and Jonathan.