Wow! Fifteen Months of Lulu!

Lulu has been 15 months old for three weeks now. This stage is one of my favorites, in which every moment is full of discovery. Everywhere she turns, her eyes light on something and she sucks in her breath as if surprised to see it there. She points, and if we follow her direction, sometimes we are lucky enough to see whatever she sees.

In the last two weeks she has been slowly but steadily crossing from being a crawler to being a toddler. You can always tell when she is pleased with herself because she will shout at the top of her lungs. And she is pleased with herself most of the time, as long as she is the center of attention!

On her first birthday, three months ago, she formed her first word (besides DaDa, of course), "HOT!" Since then she has added "Hi!" and "Hat." This week she added one more, "Wow!"

Every day she becomes a little more perceptive. She has started holding things up to her ear and babbling as if on the phone. She enjoys conversing with the baby she discovered in the reflection of the oven window. And yesterday she didn't just want to share my chips, she wanted to dip them in my salsa just like I was doing.

I opened the front door for her highness this morning, and she heard Rooster talking with the neighbor. From 15 feet inside the house she started shrieking, "HAIIIIIIIEEE!!!" and trundling toward the door as fast as she could. That nasty threshold throws her off every time, so it took her extra time to get over that, but soon enough she emerged into the open air, all smiles, to greet one of her biggest fans.

Five steps out, and she was mesmerized by the budding mums in the flower pot outside my door. "Whaow!" With a sharp air-sucking sound, she pointed and oohed and aahed over those buds until I felt left out for not having noticed them first.

Childhood is a journey of discovery. Somewhere along the way I lost some of the magic of discovery, and the rest of my life has become a quest to recover it. I love having kids, because it reminds me to notice all the tiny miracles all around me.