raaaaaarrrr!

Dulcie would have had her first birthday this weekend if she'd been born when expected and it seems like she's changing so fast at the moment.  She is understanding so much and is interested in absolutely everything.  She does a variety of animal noises (and actually has conversations in cat speak with Lola) but the lion sound is her favourite.  She waves for hello and goodbye and shakes her head whenever she hears "no" (or "know"!) or "don't".  She's also taken up dancing and singing, sometimes both at the same time... while playing the organ!  I will have to try to get a video of that.  She also chooses records on her dad's jukebox and rocks out to them.  She's still not quite walking, but is getting pretty close and has managed a few steps completely on her own a few times, as long as she doesn't realise she's doing it.

She loves watching this video of herself.  We've just watched it about ten times because I find it hard to resist her saying, "Adden!"  Talking of finding her hard to resist, I am having to dip my toe into the disciplinary waters.  Now that she understands what "no" means, I have seen her testing the boundaries a few times (already?!) and have had to try out the "Mum said no!" frogmarch.  Better to start as we mean to go on, I suppose, but - oh! - she is so little and cute and impossible to be stern with for long.  And on the subject of being soft, she's still sleeping in our bed every single night, but I've given up stressing about it.  It seems to work for us (for now) so we're adopting Plan B... and looking for a bigger bed :)