Takes A Licking - Keeps On Ticking!

Baby Violet is 13 months old - she'll be 14 months in a few days (on the 9th).  She is just a smidge over one year old, and I am in amazement of her personality and all the things she can do.

She has such a passion for music.  I have never seen anyone love music quite as much as she does.  I hope she has a beautiful singing voice - how great would that be?  I guess time will tell!  She loves playing the piano and loves to listen to all kinds of music...from K-Pop to Classical. 

She loves to dance ad play dress-up.  She loves wearing tutus and pretending to be a ballerina.  I still think of her as  a teeny baby, but clearly she has other ideas! ;-)





She is a great kisser.  If you say, "Hey Violet, give me a kiss!" - she will run up to you and plant one on you.  She will only give you a kiss when she wants to, though.  If she's not in the mood, she will nod her head "No" a few times and walk away.  Haha!





She has so many teeth.  She has basically all of her teeth, except maybe one or two here and there.  I have never seen anything like it.  She has this mouth full of teeth - a little perfectly straight white smile.  She loves brushing her teeth and will often go into the bathroom, climb up on the stepstool, and start brushing her teeth by herself.  She will even get out the kiddie toothpaste.  She is amazing!





She is so incredibly smart.  Really smart.  She understands everything, and if you ask her to do something, she knows just what you're saying.  So, if I ask her to go get the diapers...she'll go get the diapers, the wipes, the Desitin...hand them to me and lay down on the floor.  Then when it's all said and done, she takes the old diaper to the trash and throws it away.  I told Mr. M she's ready to potty train and I was only half joking.  ;-)  Or if I say, "It's cold outside, you need a jacket," - she will go and find a jacket and try to put it on.  Same for shoes.  Before I know it, she'll be making us all lunch.  :-)




Part of it is that she loves doing whatever her big sisters are doing.  So, she wants to sit at the big table in a big chair (NOT her high chair - gasp!)  She gets really frustrated if she is treated like a "baby" - she doesn't see herself that way at all. 

Here she is helping Ginger "decorate" Daisy.  :-)




One other thing that's pretty remarkable about Baby Violet is how tough she is.  Seriously, she is one tough cookie.  She is so rough and tumble - she is fearless, always climbing - and when she takes a tumble, she just gets right back up and starts over.

This morning she was playing in the backyard with her sisters and she was stung by a bee.  I was in the kitchen putting away groceries, and Paprika ran in to tell me.  I went outside and sure enough, Violet had a huge purple welt on her forehead with a sting mark in the middle.  I am not sure if it was a wasp or a bee, or what.  So, I ran to Violet and thought for sure she would be crying, but she just looked up at me like:  What?!  :-)  And then she went right on playing.

On Friday afternoon, she climbed on something when my back was turned and fell and her nose was bleeding.  I was freaking out (inside) - but she was just smiling up at me after her fall, blood running down her cheek.  I wiped her nose and she went back to playing like nothing ever happened.

We like to say:  She takes a licking and keeps on ticking. She really is an unstoppable force of joy and nothing gets in her way!




Needless to say, I spend most of my time running after her and keeping her from hurting herself.  Even though our house is babyproofed, she always manages to find something to get into - and she loves, loves, loves to climb.  She (just like her older sisters) is a great climber, and loves to find her way to the tippy top of anything she can. 

Her favorite thing to do now is to climb up onto a dining room chair, then from the chair up onto the top of the dining table.  I have started putting the chairs ontop of the table (like a restaurant at closing time) just to keep her off the tabletop!

It's funny because at this age, Paprika also loved to climb, but now Paprika has a real fear of heights.  Ginger is still a big climber (yesterday at the park she climbed a bunch of tall trees!) - So, I wonder if this is just a normal toddler thing to want to do and something she will outgrow, or if one day she'll be a rockclimber.  Who knows!





She has a big sense of humor and can make anything into a toy.  This was late on New Year's Eve - she found a giftbag hanging around the house and was playing peek-a-boo with me.  She could have done it forever...she thought it was so hilarious. :-)



In the past month, she has dropped down to one nap/day.  She naps for an hour or so in the afternoon.  Then falls asleep around midnight, awake at 9:30am.  She also wakes up a few times at night to nurse still.  That's pretty typical for our kids at this age - I can't compare myself to others who have 5 year old kids who still take a nap.  Not us! 

I know that within 6-8 months, she will drop that one nap entirely.  Part of me will miss the napping, but the other part will be glad to have full days to do outings when we don't have to worry about her missing her nap.





She loves food - and is very adventurous with what she will eat.  That being said, she loves chocolate.  At Christmas, Santa brought the grown-ups each a bag of Lindt Dark Chocolate Truffles- and once Violet had a taste, she could not be stopped!  I left a bag on the table, and a few minutes later, it was gone!  I looked over to find that she had swiped the bag and was unwrapping all the chocolate balls and eating them! 

She is still nursing quite a bit - I am hoping to keep that going until she's at least two (like I did with the older girls).  So far, she shows no signs of wanting to give that up, so we will continue.





Oh, and one last thing - she LOVES shoes now!  Haha.  She went through that whole barefoot thing for so long - her not wanting to wear shoes.  I can hardly remember it because now she loves shoes, and wants to wear them all the time.  She even tries to wear Ginger and Paprika's shoes.  It's amazing how quickly things change, which is why I am glad I am writing things down now...it is going by too fast! 


The End.