Talking and almost walking

"Guck!" "Guck!" "Guck!" is how we are greeted by Moira every morning (she means "duck"). Then, we'll get her in her high chair for breakfast, and she'll point at the decorative wooden duck we have sitting on a table, and she'll say "guck" again. If we give her a banana for breakfast,  she might be enticed to say "nananana"  but most of the time...it's "guck." No "mama." No "dada." Just..."guck." EVERYTHING is "guck." I had no idea "guck" could be so expressive :) We think it is about the cutest thing she's done so far. By the way, the picture below is of my cousin Marty and his wife, Katie. They're expecting their first baby sometime in May!

Everyone keeps asking if she's walking...the answer I usually give is "almost." She has taken a few steps here and there, but nothing routinely. She cruises along furniture or convinces us to hold her hands and walk with her EVERYWHERE. She even picks up her heaviest toys from the floor, stands up, and balances, but as soon as we coach her to take a step, she just gives us a huge smile, drops to her knees, and crawls over. It's like she knows that we're trying to get her to do something, and she likes to remind us with her big smile that she will do things in her own time...there's no rush.

Moira definitely has a mind of her own, and both Alan and I agree that she is one stubborn little lady (which we appreciate on the whole). She is already testing boundaries, and it can be both amusing and challenging to figure out the right thing to do. Right now, our struggles are with getting her off of a bottle and changing her clothes. Seems like it should be pretty simple, right? Well, not so much. Sometimes after I get her changed in the morning, I literally feel like I've been through a wrestling match with someone much more formidable than a 1-year-old. Alas, she just doesn't like to be separated from us right now, and she puts up quite a fight if she doesn't get her way. You'd never  guess it from all the cute photos we put up of her, but believe me, she can be a handful!

Now, back to this bottle dilemma. The doctor says she should be off of the bottle by now. Yeah...right! She doesn't have one during the day, but at night and first thing in the morning, we can't kick the habit. One day, I was determined to give up the bottle at night. So, we got all ready for bed, and I literally lined up three different types of sippy cups with warmed milk in all of them. No bottle in sight. I gave her the first one (her favorite with the straw), and she batted it away. We read a book and then came back to it. And she started to whine. So, I tried the next one. Worse reaction. And the next one...where she knocked the cup across the floor and threw the biggest tantrum of her life so far. No joke. So, I put her to bed without any milk, thinking that she must just be so tired she doesn't care. I mean, logically, if she really needed the milk, she would drink it out of the sippy cup, right? Wrong. After twenty horrible minutes of unrequited screaming and crying, I caved. That's right, I caved. I went back in and gave her the bottle. The second she had the bottle in her mouth, she stopped crying and the most peaceful and angelic look came over her face. She was asleep minutes later. Who knew getting rid of a bottle would be such a big deal?

Despite the tantrums, Moira is truly so much fun right now. We have a great time--tantrums and all.