She’s growing so quickly, I can’t keep up with my updates and records on how much she’s changing and learning each day. My scrapbooking of her is totally not caught up, and I’m just blogging in the hopes (and plans) of putting them into her album one day. I just don’t want to forget all her milestones and achievements. So for my own record, here are all the things she has managed that I don’t want to forget. Ever. As it is, memories are beginning to fade…

1. LV made her first flip when she was 4 months old. I remember this quite distinctly because I had just returned to work and my dad was watching her at that time. When he messaged me that Lauren had made her first flip, I was in school, and in tears.

2. She was able to sit upright on her own quite steadily at about 6 months. Very shortly after that she started crawling and by 7 months, was able to haul herself up to a standing position. Her first tooth also started to appear round about this time.

3. LV ate her first real adult food at about 9 months – crispy roti prata with fish curry!

4. By 9 months, she was cruising (i.e. walking as she held on to support structures) and at 10 months, she was able to take short walks in the evenings with us while holding my hand.

5. At 11 months, she was able to walk independently and was running by her first birthday.

6. She started signing independently around 9 months when she first asked for milk! By about 11 months, she was combining words to make 2-word sign sentences. Today, at 16 months, her sign vocabulary consists of:
verbs: want, eat, play, can, sleep, potty (as in, “to go to the toilet”)
adverb: please, sorry, yes
adjective: good, thank you, happy
nouns (nature/environment): flower, tree, sun, star, moon, light, butterfly, spider
nouns (food): cake, cereal, milk
nouns (fruit): apple, orange, watermelon, grapes, strawberries
nouns (things to wear): hat, diaper

7. She can say most of the mono- and bisyllabic words she can sign, and her longest 3-word sentence to date is “Where Daddy going?”. She can also say, “Mummy”, “Ah-ti” (“Aunty” in Tagalog), “please”, “bear”, “kitty”, “Kit-kat” (the name she, just today, gave the stray cat that visits our house), “nana” (for “banana”), “cookie”, and a host of other things. Just too many to record. Her first word, for the record, was “Kitty!”

8. She still breastfeeds at 16 months, and in order that she might not be demanding for milk just for comfort, she’s been taught to ask for milk when she wants some instead of tugging on my blouse. She will patiently repeat word for word in sign and voice, “Mummy, can I have some milk please?”

9. Just 2 nights ago, she developed an allergic reaction to lavender oil and broke out in rashes on her left arm. At the doctor’s, she was able to respond (with prompting) to the question, “What’s wrong?” with “I have rashes.”

10. She loves Hello Kitty for some bizarre reason. My friend puts it down as the “kitty-DNA” which I presumably passed to her. But truly, while I like Hello Kitty lots, I could not have been the one who influenced her into liking the mouthless cat, ‘cos KM was adamant that there be no Hello Kitty items in the house. Any Kitty item I owned had to be inconspicuous and inobtrusive. It is only now that because LV has an obvious love for the Sanrio icon, that I finally am filling the home with Kitty plushes. All because of LV. But of course. *grin*

11. Her pre-molars started to show at about 14 months and seems to be taking a long time to make their full-appearance.

Surely there will be more to come of her achievements, and indeed there is more to note even now, like how she’s beginning to show a strong love for dance and has learned how to tip-toe as she boogies and hops across the floor. Or how she’s not afraid of cats and has bitten Cobalt on his tail before when she was about 10 to 11 months old and trying to relief herself of teething itches. And she has finally learnt what it means to kiss someone! She gives a nice, cute peck now when asked for a kiss!

I don’t ever want to forget, and I’m so afraid I will.