Initiation

So here I am, attempting to start a blog about my boring life. Why? Mostly because I’ve felt the need for a while now to write down my thoughts (usually very fleeting - Momnesia?) and the experiences I’ve had since we’ve had Scarlett, our 18-month old. There were always moments that I thought about capturing, but never got around to it. I was always too busy, or too lazy to organize my thoughts into words. But here I am – it’s Friday night, and Brian, my husband has left to go snow camping for the weekend with his best friend, Perry. What do I do with my precious alone time, now that Scarlett is sound asleep? Get chores done? Surf the web? Start reading other people’s blogs, which I usually rarely do? Start typing my thoughts and hope for the best? Well, here goes.
I’ve never been the blogging type of person because I don’t really like attention on myself but there has been many moments during my current part-time working/part-time stay-at-home mom life where I feel the need to share moments because there just isn’t anyone else around besides Scarlett and I. Now, let me warn you now, these moments are most likely very ordinary and not worth “writing home to mom about” but for first-time parents (and grandparents and family members), I think they’re the types of moments that we hope to treasure for the rest of our lives, if we don’t forget them once our kids are all grown up.
For example, this morning when I was preparing to take Chloe, our greyhound, out for a walk, I told Scarlett that we were going to walk the dog. She got all excited, said “hat” several times, and ran to her room to find her hat. Now, mind you, ever since Scarlett has been able to voice her opinions (around six months old, I think), she’s always HATED any hat we try to put on her. So with that in mind, I can tell you that she happily donned her fleece hat and was ready to get her shoes on and go outside. The image of her prancing around in our family room with her entire head covered up except for her face and the hat flaps hanging down the sides of her face was just too adorable. I think for every adorable picture that I have taken of her, there have been ten more that I have missed.
Lately, I’ve been constantly amazed with her increasing vocabulary. When she first started to talk, I started counting the number of words that she could say (with the appropriate meaning). I think I had done this for her 12 month check-up, so that if her pediatrician asks, then I can automatically say, she has a “x”-word vocabulary. Well, the first count netted 12 words. Now, I don’t even bother counting. It seems that she’s saying a couple new words every couple of days. It’s almost as if a synapse in her brain has been made and she can verbalize a word that she has heard us say repeatedly to her. Last Saturday, she finally decided to verbalize Grandma and Grandpa, even though we've been saying it to her for months. Except, her version of it was more like “Gan-ma” and “Gan-pa”. Incidentally, her pronunciation of Grandma sounds exactly like the word for Godmother in Mandarin. How funny. Well, today, I found that she could identify the word “umbrella” from a picture of it in a book that I bought her last week - except, she calls it “brella”. That and “kite” were her 2 new words today.