Upon Waking From Her Nap

Little G is at a fun age. (This age also has lots of not fun in it, but let's be positive, folks.) She's excels at congratulating herself on a job well done. Lately, she''s been very proud of her performance with Puzzles. She gives herself lots of claps, hands-over-the-head silent snaps and audible, "Wows!"

She has one puzzle that she does over and over. This is really the only puzzle that she does. It's this great puzzle that makes sounds when you put the pieces in it and she loves it. She does the cutest little celebratory things with her fingers and her forehead. I'm not sure what to call it other than Cute nd Inspired.

Sometimes she gets so into her puzzle that she removes her Nuk from her mouth and sets it aside. This means she's getting serious.

Then a moment later she will pick that Nuk back up for some much-deserved congratulatory sucking.

The funniest thing to me, as her mother (Mother of the Puzzle Genius), is her perseverance at overcoming the puzzle piece trials. All of the pieces are shaped like farm animals. For this reason many of the pieces are oddly shaped and easy to orient into their slots. One piece in particular, that pesky mouse, is rather spherical and confusing. She always gets frustrated and wants to hit the puzzle and give up. Lest you think it that kind of story, though, let me say that she is no Quitter.

She has conquered this puzzling piece! She picks it up and almost immediately says, "Mommy, mommy," (translation: "Help me with this blasted, baffling thing that threatens to bamboozle and bewilder my budding intellect! Please.") However, now she has done the puzzle so many times she is able to figure it out. It is the first activity that she seeks when she gets up from her nap. She's got the right idea: she wants to wake up to success!

Her perseverance and her little curly/nappy bedhead and only two of her most precious features at this small age. Also: her sweetness toward her sister when Stella stumbles out of sleep. She always offers a toy and some old-fashioned affection and I only wish I could bottle it up and sell it for Christmas because it would surely stimulate this much-maligned economy.