I'm baaaaack

I took Molly to her 15-month checkup on Monday (only two months late) and was shocked to learn that her height is in the 80-90th percentile. Genes are a mysterious thing; mix them up one way and you get a brown-eyed midget who looks like her mother wasn't even present at her conception and mix them another and you get blonde curls and a bad attitude.

Unless, of course, you are my sister and her husband and you give birth to the same child twice. I guess it helps if you start out looking like an incestuous sibling pair to start with.

Yesterday we spent about an hour and a half in our local library seeing a presentation on "Birds of Prey." Frankie was quite fascinated by it, especially when they brought out an eagle that sat on the man's arm, spreading its six foot wing span and staring at all of us with judging eyes. I could feel how much it wanted to pay us all back for making him sit in a cage all afternoon by flying directly at our heads and sinking its talons into our eyeballs.

The presentation would have been fascinating for me, too, were it not for the twenty-one pound ball of spitting anger that was sitting on my lap trying to wrest my shirt off. There were probably eighty to a hundred kids in the room and I had the proud distinction of being the only one whose child was throwing herself to the carpet and rolling around in throes of righteous indignation. The best part is that when she cries loudly she wails "OWWWWWWWW!!OWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!" so it seems like you are secretly stabbing her with hatpins while you try to discipline her.

I must say that, when it's not being directed at me, Molly's stubborn-as-a-mule nature is a source of great amusement. I love to watch other children try to corral her (see Sylvie's attempt above) and see an expression of great disgust come over her face as she attempts to swing wildly at the perpetrator. The combination of a fierce desire to be independent and the impotence of being two feet tall and unable to speak makes toddlerhood such a cocktail of surprises.