Today, my baby girl is 14 months old. And to mark the occasion, the boogers are back with a vengeance. I had to check my old posts to see when the last time was that Cate got sick because I couldn’t remember. It was mid-February. That means we’ve gone over a month without being sick, which is a record this winter. (Yeah, I know, it’s technically spring, but it’s overcast and 40-something degrees, so it doesn’t feel very spring-y.) So I suppose I should be grateful that the colds are starting to become fewer and farther between. And yet… no, not so much grateful. Just hating the snot that makes my poor girl miserable.

I don’t know if it’s a real cold or just teething; I know that the last time one of her bottom teeth broke through, she got all snotty-nosed for a week, and then it dried up the day that the tooth broke through. I’m hoping that’s what it is – she has 3 teeth on the bottom, and the fourth one has been working its way to the surface for ages now. (Oddly, her top two teeth made an appearance with nary a sniffle.) So I’m crossing my fingers that it isn’t a real cold, because those seem to take ages to recover from. The last time she got a tooth, I knew that it wasn’t a real cold because in spite of the boogers, she was still in a good mood all the time. Now… well, it’s kind of hard to tell what’s going on with the frequent toddler meltdowns. It’s rough, I kind of want to give her a multiple choice quiz.

1. Hey kiddo, why so upset?
a.) I have a cold.
b.) My teeth hurt.
c.) I’m just being a toddler, you stupid bee-yotch.

Seriously, if she could just communicate what’s going on, it’d make it so much easier to handle. Well, that, plus being able to blow her nose. That would help tremendously.

Anyway, enough of the Sicky Talk, here are some baby milestones:

* Walking! She’s still only going a few steps at a time. Dave and I recently noticed that she can go a lot farther if we pretend like we aren’t watching her. When we’re watching, we freak out and applaud and get her all excited, so she starts to do her little bouncy dance, at which point she falls flat on her butt. But if we aren’t watching her, she concentrates on what she’s doing a little more, and she went a good 15-20 steps one time. (I was watching her in the reflection of the window, she didn’t see me.)

* More talking. She’s got at least a half-dozen names for the cats, and I only know a few of them (gitty, giggy, ba-ba, daggy & dabby – those last two are easy to confuse with daddy, but you can usually tell what she means by context). She also says “no,” complete with a head shake, dada/daddy, mama, “atsy” (for Patsy), Buddy (Patsy’s dog), and a couple of other things. My favorite is that when she’s eating, she makes the sign for “more” and says “muh.” That’s a pretty huge deal, since this is the first sign I’ve gotten from her. She doesn’t always use it correctly – a lot of times she’ll do it when she already has a mouthful of food. I usually answer her with, “yes, I just gave you more, that’s right.” Hopefully we’ll get the correct usage figured out soon.

* The tantrums are a pretty new thing, although really, the less said about them, the better. I’m sure that y’all don’t want to read about my baby screaming any more than I want to hear her scream myself.

* She’s starting to try a few new foods, which has been good. I have a feeling she’s going to go back and forth on this one a lot over the next few years, so I’m trying not to make a big deal out of it. Also, while we were in Raleigh, she learned how to drink out of a cup with a straw. I bought her some spill-proof straw cups when we got home (aside: the spill-proof claim? Lies. All lies.), and she really seems to like slurping her water out of them.

There’s some other stuff that I’m sure I’ve forgotten. Mostly, though, she’s just been awesome and fun, and I love getting to spend time with her every day.