Gillian Rose

Gillian has always been more easily soothed than her sister, so when she was really tiny, it would have been easy to think that she was a more passive person. But we've always suspected that she had her own strong will, and that her willingness to go with the flow was because she was actively choosing to comply. It's hard to say why we had this impression, but it has been confirmed as she's gotten older, and better able to express her desires. If she can't get a toy to work, she takes my hand and places it expectantly on the toy (she's done this for months now). And when she's in her high chair and wants to be picked up, she now takes my hands and places them urgently under her arms to show me what I'm to do.

She's perched just between baby and very young toddler, and it's almost heartbreaking to see her begin to move definitively from one precious stage to the next. I love the soft sweetness where the back of her jaw meets her neck, when it's exposed for a second as she tips her head, and I can kiss it. And the little fold at her wrists that makes her hands look like they were added on separately, kind of like the joints on an antique Madame Alexandre doll that my mother had when I was little. Her still-bowed legs and her long feet, her tummy that is still round but is slimming out--I can tell when I hold her upright and move in for the "tummy kisses!" that she loves. Her baby proportions--how she stretches her arms all the way up and her hands are just barely above her head. Her soft lips when she falls asleep and I kiss her as I lay her down in the bed. Her murmer "tsss," with such a proud smile when she can lean forward with her mouth open and plant a kiss on me. How she squawks when she sees that Allison Clare has a clementine or some blueberries and she wants some too, and how she clambers all over AC in the bathtub (so much that Allison Clare has started forlornly asking if she can be bathed "first," meaning separately, and I can't blame her).

In the mornings, I put her in front of the mirror in our bedroom with a toy, and dash over to our bathroom across the room to do a bit of makeup application or brush my teeth, and then I hear the toy fall to the floor, and the fast swish-galump, swish-galump of her lopsided crawl (on one foot and one knee--the foot makes a great big step, and the knee a little one), and then I feel her little fingers on my hem as she tries to tug herself up. Oh, Gilly-Bean, my little cutie-pie, you're springing up so big already around my feet!