Gaz sez, "One day when I'm bigger, but not as big as you and Dad, I'm going to have long, long hair and a long, long dress, and I'm going to sing a perfect song." This will, she says, take place on a stage upon which she has put up a lot of Christmas lights.

We've both been upgraded from "Mommy" and "Daddy" to just Mom and Dad. It seems too soon in some ways, but is perhaps evidence that she is thinking more about the things she says now.

She's also taken to saying "muh" instead of "my," as in, "Mom! There's poop in muh diaper!" It's funny the first five times, but after that just gets kinda weird. Are we the victim of a hillbilly changeling?

Last night she woke up and called for me, "Mom. MOM." Not panicked or whining, just insistent. I went in to check on her and found her sitting up in bed. I reached out for her and she grabbed my arm, held it close to her chest, and relaxed back onto the bed, face-first. I stayed bent over the bed rail (fun!), rubbing her back with my free hand, until she fell back asleep. From that vantage point, I saw that sometime before summoning me, she'd retrieved her sippy cup from the bedside table and had a drink of water. It was not so long ago that it took a lot of work to get her back to sleep if she woke up enough to call for me, and really not so long ago that she would thrash about in bed, crying for her cup of water to be brought to her. Now she remembers where the cup is, and she knows that I'll come, and she doesn't need quite so much to soothe her back down. There will be days when she does need more, but I do appreciate these days of relative ease.

I think 2009 is going to be a good year, full of lots of good new growth. Speaking of which, she's grown another half inch. Not much longer for some of those 4T clothes. And she wants everyone to know that she's "getting this snapping thing." Maybe for next Halloween I'll dress her up as a little Beatnik.