Ninety-nine percent of the time she’s happy. Really, really happy.
But sometimes she’s mad.
And other times, she’s…resigned.
This girl has my heart in her hands. I am putty. When she crawls across the room to come lay her head on my chest, even for a brief second or two, I melt a little. In the rarest of moments when she is content to just let me hold her, her cheek resting against the curve of my shoulder, her chubby arm curled tightly around my neck, I hold my breath for fear of losing this magic.
We are three weeks out from the big O-N-E. It still amazes me that I’ve had this little pixie for only a year, despite my very identity being unrecognizable from the time before her.
She has two and a half teeth. She walks with the help of her brother, or the couch, or her train that scoots across the floor. She eats anything you set in front of her, and anything that looks like food off the floor. She shares goldfish crackers and fruit cups with me. She calls me by name, sort of. She has a distinct vowel sound for calling her brother. Her hair is getting longer, and blow-drying it into a giant fuzzball after bath time is one of my favorite things to do. People say she’s me, almost thirty years ago. She is my doppelgänger (which is only fair, since Bug is Hubs’ six-and-three-fourths-year-old clone). She is my little lady love and she is the stuff of fairy tales.
Spitting Image, Right?
Meet the Buttrams 
I can’t stand it – you are both too cute!
I remember three weeks from Karly’s first birthday.
She had no teeth. Almost no hair (what she had was blonde and hard to see without a bow).
She had not yet taken her first steps.
She still nursed.
She weighed 16 pounds. My peanut.
Now she wears a bra. Oh my.
Can somebody PLEASE stop the clock?
Your sweet girl is precious. And she will ALWAYS be your baby.
Always…
Thanks, lady, I needed to hear that! From cuteness to my baby forever.
I think my little Bean might have a whole whopping pound on Karly. Nothing like the 28-pound Michelin baby her brother was.
She might be growing up too fast, but I’ll take any reason to party.
You almost make me want to have a baby…almost…I’ll wait for mine to have some…
Yes, babies are awfully tempting when they are cute and squishy and smiley and you’re well-rested and you can’t hear their screams or smell their dirty diapers and… 😉
These are the kind of cute pictures that convince us to have babies even though we know how stressful, expensive, and smelly they are.
Convinced yet?
So expressive – very cute!
Makes me think I need to work on a few more expressions.
I’ve basically got one.
And it could use some tweaking.
🙂
Hah! Kids have the funniest expressions. Maybe because they’re not worried about wrinkles.
Love this, Jess. Everything about it says unconditional love.
Thanks!
Even the one when I chose to document her angry face and take seventeen hundred more pictures instead of releasing her from her high chair? I’ll take it.
You are both beautiful.
My Monkey seemed to have the inverse ratio going on he.
He was absolutely miserable until he learned to walk.
He never crawled.
Once upright, he never stopped moving.
He runs everywhere.
I now believe all that crying, all that misery was rally baby frustration: “I want that thing over there. But I caaaaaaan’t gettttttttt itttttttttt! Waaaaaahhhhhh! Somebodyyyyyyyyy gettttttttttt ittttttttttttt! Waaaaaaaahhhhh! It looks sooooo coooooool, that thiiiiiiiing! Waaaaaaaaah! Why won’t someone gettttttttttt it? Waaaaaaaaaaah!
He came home asking about wet dreams the other day.
Did your jaw drop?
Mine did.
Where did my baby go? Waaaaaaaaah! 😉
O. M. G. I don’t know what I would have done if I heard “wet dreams” coming out of my kid’s mouth. Were you holding a full glass of water? I would have dropped it.
And gosh, Mom, he had places to BE, even at >1 year old…
So so beautiful. Both of you!
Thank you! She definitely makes me look good.