2009 - Year End Review

Happy 1st birthday, my dear sweet Natalie.

Your monthly recaps have allowed me to document your beautiful life. I've written about the things you've accomplished (holding your head up, sleeping through the night, sitting up by yourself, standing up by yourself, etc), my feelings about being a mom (unbridled joy, sheer exhaustion, complete confusion, incredible happiness, etc), and my hopes for you (that you'll have a great group of friends when you're older, that you know you can always come to Daddy and me for anything [we might not be able to do anything about it, but still, please come to us], that you'll embrace your you-come-by-it-honestly dorkiness, etc).

For your year-end review, I decided to do a couple of Top 10 Lists.

Top 10 Things You Love:

1. Eating Cheerios
   
2. Drinking water
   
3. Sitting in a shopping cart
4. Playing peekaboo
5. Being read to
   
6. Making Scruncher Bear faces
7. Eating Cheerios
8. Looking at yourself in the mirror
9. Playing with your toys
10. Eating Cheerios

Top 10 Things You Hate:

1. Baths
2. Baths
3. Baths
4. Mandarin oranges (I think it's a texture thing)
5. Getting your fingernails clipped
6. Baths
7. Having me put your hair into pigtails (sorry 'bout your luck, kid - but you're going to have to get used to this)
8. Having me take something away from you that you shouldn't have been touching in the first place (my cellphone, the remote control, your hand from the potentially hot oven door, etc)
9. Baths
10. Baths

Top 10 Things You're Good At:

1. Smiling
2. Waving
3. Clapping
4. Sleeping though the night; napping
   
5. Eating
6. Standing up by yourself
7. Getting your toys to make noise
8. Making Scruncher Bear faces
9. Crawling
10. Melting the heart of any adult who has had the pleasure of meeting you

Top 10 Things You're Not Good At:

1. Being a willing bather. Unfortunately for you, bathing is a requirement of each member of Team Smith.
   
2. Smiling when we leave you in the church nursery (again, I'm forever thankful for the church nursery volunteers who reassure me that you'll eventually stop crying ...)
3. Patience. You have zero tolerance for being hungry or sleepy
4. Not having separation anxiety. I know you'll eventually grow out of it though.
5. Being a good listener while someone reads to you. Proper reading etiquette says that you're not supposed to crawl away and find something else to do if someone is reading to you.
   
6. Being quiet and willing when Daddy or I put your jammies on at night. A friend said it best - it's like trying to put jammies on an octopus.
   
7. Fixing Daddy and me breakfast in the morning. Is whipping up a simple stack of blueberry pancakes too much to ask?
8. Naming all the 50 states in alphabetical order. I know them. Ha.
   
9. Solving differential equations. How are you going to get into an Ivy League school when you can't do simple calculus?
   
10. Emptying the dishwasher. The bottom rack is at your level; I can't understand why you won't pitch in and do some chores around here.

2009 was the best year ever. And go ahead and pat yourself on the back, my little love. Because it had everything to do with you.