Our girl is no longer a "baby"..... I guess she has officially entered toddler hood :(
I have so enjoyed being her mother the past year. With her turning 13 months old today, she gets to now get the label of "toddler".......Oh Boy!!! Let the fun times begin!!!
She is such a sweet little girl. She literally leans in sometimes out of the blue and gives me a big wide open mouthed kiss. I love this I must tell you!!! She has brought everything into my life and more that I dreamed of all those years I spent dreaming of becoming a mother!!
She is becoming soooo independent, but yet so completely a Daddy's girl. This has been going on for awhile now, and I guess I thought it would just pass, but it continues on day after day..... She only wants Daddy!!! She and me are fine until he comes home and that's it for the evening, she only wants Daddy to hold her, feed her, change her diaper, and rock her to sleep!!! It was really starting to get to me, so I asked my group of Smocking Mommas on facebook about this- and they ALL assured me that this is totally normal. There is just an uncanny bond between little girls and their Daddy.
And I must say after I mulled this over for a couple days, I am actually incredibly glad that she has this relationship with her Daddy!!!! I want her to feel secure, loved, wanted and validated from the most important man in her life- her Daddy. I don't want her to ever feel or be like I was......my Dad walked out on me and my Mom when I was 9 months old!! Now as a parent I wonder even more deeply- "How could your just leave your own child?" "HOW???!!"
I felt so abandoned, but I could not figure out why, when I had the most amazing Mom on the planet........and then it finally came to me after going through counseling and beginning to process all I had been through as a young girl without a father in my life....... You go looking for that love in all the wrong places, sometimes with devastating consequences.
I am so fortunate to have had a mother that devoted her life to raising me and seeing to it that I never made those horrible decisions that many young girls make just looking for that love they should have gotten at home. This simple and plain truth has weighed heavily on me this week as Chloe's behavior sometimes has hurt my feelings..... Selfishly I think "I want to be her everything, She is supposed to want her Momma, " but then I come to reason that this relationship that God created in her, to want the love of her Daddy, is a good thing and I should welcome and embrace it~ in fact I should thank God for the amazing husband that I have that is such a calming presence to her that she wants to be near him constantly!!
I don't want to make it sound like she never wants to be with me, but overwhelmingly right now, Daddy is who she prefers. So instead of feeling a bit sad, or jealous like I have been feeling lately, I feel so incredibly grateful that my daughter will never grow up without her Daddy and have to experience all the pain I did..... Now that is something worth being thankful for!!!
Some other happenings in her 13th month are that she now has 4 teeth on top and three on the bottom. We are now off baby food for the most part, but man this kid is not so much a picky eater as she just doesn't eat!!! She doesn't eat enough to keep a bird alive really!!! But the doctor says as long as she is gaining weight then we wont get too excited about it- she may eat more later.
She still weighs about 21 lbs and is 27" tall. She is definitely going to be a tall slender gal!!!
Other than that, not much else going on with us. We are certainly ready to get the holiday season started, and decorate the house which should be soooooo much fun this year with a little one wanting to explore and touch everything!!! But that's what the holidays are all about!
Until next time~
