Some Veronica behavorial indiosyncrasies and accomplishments:

1. Yesterday, Veronica fed herself for the first time with a spoon for an entire meal. It was pears and cereal, and she would not let me give her one bite, instead scooping it all up herself - rather succesfully, I might add - and getting it into her mouth. If she hadn't been playing with the food with the other hand, she wouldn't have made much of a mess, either. She ate about half a bowl and she was finished.

2. Also yesterday, she was playing with her books and Jason asked her to bring him one. So she grabbed a book, scooted over to him, and handed it to him. "Very good!" he said. "Now, go get Daddy another book." And she scooted back over to her books, grabbed another one, and did the same. She did this a few times in all.

3. She just blurts out little phrases - one time, and that's it. Today she handed me a book and said "read this!" Then she scooted into the kitchen later and said, completely out-of-the-blue, "Yes no what?" Last week, when Jason was about to leave the house with her, she asked "We go outside?" in her blurry little baby talk. (He answered with "yes, we're going outside!" and asked her to say it again. She followed up with "a door.") Heaven forbid you ever expect her to repeat these things, though. :-P

4. She loves shoes. She plays with ours in the front hallway, and I've taught her that they go on feet. If you give her your foot, she will try to place it in a shoe. Even funnier - and much cuter - she will put her own foot into your shoe, then hold her foot up to admire how it looks. It's quite comical to see her little baby feet modeling my new Birkenstocks.

You can put her in her own shoes, but she usually takes them right back off after a few minutes. Although one time Jason did it, and told her "you have such pretty shoes!" She looked at her feet, twirled them around a little, then hunched down and smiled coyly at the compliment. These all leads Jason to believe that the thing with women and shoes must be genetic.

5. She also, apparently, loves jewelry. She has these little interlocking plastic fish rings. Jason put one on her wrist yesterday, and since she seemed to like that, he put one on each ankle as well. While she removed the wrist one fairly quickly, she left on the ones on the ankles and became very irate when Jason tried to remove them. This resulted in her wearing these little makeshift anklets all afternoon - during her nap, during a stop by Jason's workplace, during lunch at a pizzeria, and during a grocery store trip. I didn't see him take them off of her, but I can't imagine there wasn't a battle involved.

6. What does she NOT like? Grass. Today we attended a Lamaze class reunion/birthday party for the kids, who are all now around a year old. As expected, Veronica was the only child there not walking and the only one without teeth. As usual, she didn't really act like any of the other kids; she studied everything, was very methodical with the toys, and couldn't have cared less about the cupcakes. We expected all this.

However, we wanted to get a group picture with all the babies, and thought it would be a great idea to sit them outside on the grass. So we plopped down Veronica on the grass. Now, she's been outside before, but always on a blanket or a patio. I never thought THIS would happen:

She sat with her arms up and her legs extended up so that only her diapered butt was on the grass, and was quite perturbed. She did not want any of her skin to touch the grass. Better yet, she sat in this absurd pose for a few minutes while we took pictures. It was the strangest thing any of us had ever seen, and led at least one of the moms to comment that she wished she had ab muscles like that.

I never expected to have such a quirky kid. She certainly makes life interesting, and I love her for all of it. She's a little sweetheart, hardly ever cried at the party and pretty much passed out when she got home from being so tired. She's pretty mellow overall too.

So that's our kid in a nutshell, for now. And we adore her.