Dear Kate,

Since I am combining your 13 and 14 month newsletters, you can probably tell that I have been procrastinating about writing lately. I think everyone goes through writing slumps like this, and for whatever reason I have been in one. But today, I have inspiration. Today, Kate, is election day in our great country. And that means that if I just keep myself busy for one more day, the election will be over, and I can return to a normal life that does not involve robot phone calls from Rudy Guliani urging me to vote for ... well, I don't know who he wanted me to vote for, because I hung up. So in case you were wondering why I yelled "I HAVE ALREADY VOTED! LEAVE ME ALONE!" yesterday afternoon at around 2:30, that is why. Sorry about the outburst.

The good news is that while the last two months have been pretty obnoxious regarding the election, you have been a lot of fun. The biggest change in you these months has been an explosion in your curiosity about what is around you. Shortly after your first birthday, you started pointing at whatever was in front of you and grunting. For several days I was interpreting that as you wanting to hold all of these objects, and since many of them were things that wouldn't be appropriate for you to have, I would say no and you would cry and it was a very frustrating cycle. Then one day your daddy saw you do that and said "You know, I think she just wants you to tell her what everything is." And he was right. Now we spend lots of time every day saying "And that is dishwashing detergent. And that is a towel. That is a trash can." And you are happy as a clam with your new knowledge and your first complete spoken phrase, which is "What's that?" I am taking this as a sign that you will grow up to be a reporter like Mommy. I will buy you a little notebook as soon as I think you won't eat the pages.

And then there is the walking. You still are not an exclusive walker, and spend most of your day crawling, but you can walk when you want to, and you are very proud of yourself when you do. Of course with every bit of new mobility for you comes a new childproofing challenge for me. This week, you discovered the toilets. And now, if I turn my back on you for an instant, you scurry to see if one of the bathroom doors happens to be open. I try to keep them closed, but two times in one day last week, I heard splashing and discovered you with your arms submerged to the elbows in toilet water, gleefully paddling away. Good thing you have recently picked up the sign language for "Wash hands." ( You also know how to sign "shoes", and this is a picture of your first pair of walking shoes).

Speaking of the signing, that's another area where you've made big strides these last couple of months. We recently graduated you to the second video in the Baby Signing Time series, and I don't know if you just like it better than the first one or if something clicked in your head, but you have been independently doing the signs without any prompting from us. The cutest one is that you have learned to sign "blanket" and you do it when you are sleepy and want your blanket. And, of course, your monkey. I think I've mentioned Dangles the Monkey here before, but you are now so attached to him that you cannot move from one room to another without determining where Dangles is. If I leave him in your bed after a nap I will very soon find you standing next to your crib and crying for him. So this week, your daddy and I took out a little insurance and ordered a backup Dangles from Amazon. Not a moment too soon, either. Turns out the makers of this particular monkey are discontinuing that model soon. So we've decided to order a third and then enact a "Guard the Monkey With Your Life" policy for the foreseeable future, because I can tell that my existence would become very unpleasant if you had to do without that monkey.

You're also developing an awareness of humor. By that I mean that you have figured out that when you do certain things, we laugh, and you like it when we laugh, so you do those things more and then try to think of new things to do that will make us laugh. And you mimic our actions a lot more than you used to do. The other day you came across a comb that had fallen off our bathroom counter onto the floor and without any hesitation you picked it up and started combing your hair. It's amazing to me how much you are learning just from watching. Like drinking from a straw, your new favorite activity in all the world.

Or how to hold the phone with your shoulder, just like mommy.

All these little things are adding up to a growing sense for me that you are really becoming less of a baby and more and more of an independent little person. And I'm so proud of all your accomplishments, but it also makes me a little sad to see that baby slip away more and more every day. Which is why I'm glad that every night when you and go to your room to read some books and let you wind down a little before bed time, although you now want to stand by my chair like a big girl instead of sitting in my lap, you still lay your head on my knee and let me rub your back and cuddle you when you start to get sleepy. I love that.

And I love you,

Mommy

Three days after the election I have to say my main emotion is still relief that it's over. Not that some of the robocalls weren't funny. One of them, which I heard via my answering machine on election day, featured a guy with a creepy voice and tone of speaking you usually hear in the previews for horror movies saying "The Democrats are flooding the polls right now ...." and I didn't hear the rest. But I did laugh. I mean, really? Now you're going to scare me into voting by mentioning Democrats? You're going to have to come up with something a lot more terrifying than that.

With that said, I didn't vote for Obama. But I'm not going around in sackcloth and ashes over his election either, and I'm fully prepared to respect him as president for the next four years and keep an open mind about what he will do. I also think we've come a long way as a country to elect an African American man to the presidency, and that is more progress than I would have credited us with before this.

A few people around the blogosphere who I gather also didn't vote for Obama have said things in recent days that I think are very insightful. In order to qualify for this post, they also didn't involve the phrase "liberal media." So I will give them props here via linkage. A couple of these people don't know I read their blogs, because I am a world-class lurker. So, umm, hello to Half Pint House and My Life in Sweatpants. I hereby delurk and declare my love of your blogs. Sorry to have been stalking you.

Tim of The Wrestling Mat, who knows me in real life, on what Obama's background could mean for interracial families.

Megan of Half Pint House on the fact that the world, if you notice, has continued to turn.

Leura of My Life in Sweatpants with some great thoughts, election or not, on what the pro-life movement might look like in an inhospitable political environment. Or what it should look like in the lives of Christians no matter who is in office.

And Ligon Duncan on praying for our new president and his family. I have always thought that it must be extraordinarily difficult to move your family into the White House, with all the scrutiny and stress that entails, and I think this family, especially because they have two young daughters who will do a lot of their growing up in the public eye, will need those prayers.

Food for thought. Thus end my political musings. Like Megan, I have laundry to do.

Well, after a year hiatus from molding the minds of the kids in our church, Dan and I are teaching a Sunday School class again, and this time, the stakes are a lot higher. Why? Because it's the junior high class, and I am scared they will make fun of me. Not because the kids are mean, but just because the mere phrase "junior high Sunday School" takes me back to my own junior high days. I had a pretty major lack of confidence at that point in my life, and for good reason, since I had glasses, braces and a crippling fear of speaking in public, even to answer questions in Sunday School.

The good news is that the kids in our class, all three of them, are really nice to me, and probably would even have been nice to my junior high self. The bad news is that the curriculum we have, while very easy to use and actually pretty insightful, has this laser-focus on making us discuss, to put it delicately, awkward concepts with the kids. I feel like they loaded the deck in favor of awkward by choosing to teach big portions of the early Old Testament. I never noticed it until I was required to explain it to impressionable youngsters, but some crazy stuff happens in the Old Testament, people. For example:

Abraham and Hagar: "Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar; so she said to Abram, "The Lord has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my maidservant; perhaps I can build a family through her." Genesis 16: 1, 2

That one made me want to conduct a quick poll of our students' parents before we got started to determine what the kids do and do not know about the birds and the bees, so to speak. If that answer to that turned out to be "not much" then I was thinking I would, without warning Dan, just change the subject of the lesson on the spot. "Today, kids, we'll be talking about ... ponies." Dan would just have to go along with it. I think part of what makes it awkward is that our church is small, and so it is not surprising that we taught all of these kids when they were in the little kids class, where we mostly did crafts and sang songs and did most certainly not discuss family planning customs of the ancient world. And then while I wasn't looking, they started growing up, and gluing popsicle sticks together no longer holds their attention.

But the week about Hagar pales in comparison to the next lesson, where we got to talk about the seal of the covenant between Abraham and God ... circumcision. And I kid you not, the writers of the curriculum suggested that if we wanted to, we could split the group up into guys and girls so that we could explain to them in a non-embarrassing context just exactly what circumcision entails. No, thank you! I think we'll just gloss right over that and move on, as my good Southern upbringing dictates.

This week, we talked about the story of Isaac and Rebekah and the practical application had to do with dating. We made the mistake of telling the kids that's what we would be discussing ahead of time, and based on the looks on their faces when we started, I think they thought we were going to bring them into the room and make them practice asking people out. So overall, I think they were relieved when we just stuck with the story and what it tells us about how God takes care of his people's lives, even down to details like who they marry. And I kind of thought it went well. Until Eli pulled out his list and I realized that for the most part, these kids would still rather die than be seen in public with a member of the opposite gender.

So far, Edie, who talked us into this in the first place, has not intervened to fire us, so I am assuming we have met my main goal, which is to avoid saying anything that makes anyone's parents have to re-explain the aforementioned birds and bees. But on the way home from church yesterday it occurred to me that, as impossible as it seems, one day Kate is going to be old enough that I need to talk to her about stuff like dating and relationships, and it isn't like that's going to be any less awkward just because it's my own kid. Probably more so, really. So I am thankful that people in our church are letting me practice on their kids. That is community for you.

Not that I won't totally understand if someone fires us. Next week they want us to do a skit. My junior high self is really freaked out about that.

These photos are funny to me, not because of what meets the eye, but because of what you don't know if you just look at them. In the photos, it would appear that Kate, who is gazing tranquilly into the camera, is snuggling with me in a picture-perfect moment of mommy-baby bonding. But if you look closely, you will see that her little arms are jammed into my body like ramrods in the first picture, and that is where the truth lies: The whole time our friend Bob was taking these pictures, she was trying to get away from me. The only time she wants me to hold her is when I'm trying to make dinner. Then she wraps her body around my ankles as if starved for attention. Ah, the contradictions of mothering a toddler.

Thanks for the picture, Bob and Judi!

Kate recently started signing the word "hat." She learned it on her baby signing video, but we thought it was odd that she honed in on it, since she doesn't often wear a hat. But at any rate, after a few days of her incessantly signing "hat," Dan decided to get her a hat, which I was OK with as long as it was a warm winter hat. She needs one anyway. He did a pretty good job, and came home with what has to be the warmest and most comical hat Target had to offer, complete with a pom pom on the top. Kate is in love with it and laughs every time she catches a reflection of herself wearing it.

If you notice, the front of my oven has drool streaks on it. This is because Kate likes to give her hat-wearing reflection big slobbery kisses. And because I have given up cleaning them off more than once a week.

I like how her ensemble here includes a soup ladle. It's good to have one of those handy.

Kate's buddy Heidi came over to our house on Saturday night so her parents could go out on a date. Kate was thrilled, because she thinks Heidi's every move is hilarious, and I think Heidi had a good time too. And I snagged this photo evidence that one day, unless their tech-inclined daddies intervene, these girls are going to be literature majors like their mamas.

So studious.

We've been a little busy the last week, since my mom has been in town. But here are a few pictures to give you an idea of what we've been doing.

Kate has discovered a new favorite accessory: sunglasses. First she wanted to wear my sunglasses, but they were way too big, and then she broke them. That's too bad for me, but not surprising since every pair of sunglasses I have ever owned has met some unfortunate end. I will never buy sunglasses that cost more than about ten dollars because they have the life span of the common housefly in my possession. Still, the greater crisis in this case was Kate's burning need to accessorize. So it's a good thing I remembered that a friend gave us a pair of little kid sunglasses for a gift. Since then, Kate has been even more impressed with her own reflection.

Of course, it's even better when you add the hat she already loves so much. And a Tupperware lid.

This is a funny picture I took of Kate's buddy Lily at our church's annual Pie and Praise get-together Sunday night. I'm not sure what Lily was doing, but she looks like a little frog getting ready to jump, and this picture makes me laugh. Church right now is pretty much a high-traffic zone for toddlers, which provides some quality entertainment and at least one spectacular collision per Sunday.

And here is Kate with my mom at the airport at the end of a great visit. In order to get this picture, we had to make Kate stop licking the public chairs we were sitting on. I can already see that I am going to need a jumbo roll of antibacterial wipes for our flights during the Christmas holidays. And maybe some Valium so it won't stress me out so much when she does go ahead and lick the floor of the bathroom in the Houston Hobby airport despite my best efforts.

So after several years of talking myself out of it, I am going to participate in this year's December Photo Project, hosted by my dear friend and blogging mentor Rebecca Tredway. I invite anyone who reads here and also has a blog to participate, too! To read about the project, head on over to Rebecca's and read this and this. But the basic idea is that you post one photo every day from December 1 to December 25. I am sure I will flake out on more than a few days, but just anticipating doing this has already got me carrying around my camera and paying more attention to the visually interesting things I see.

Breaking News: Daniel Meigs, boyfriend of my lovely sister, has started a blog (finally!) and is going to participate in the December Photo Project. Daniel takes better pictures with one hand tied behind his back, in his sleep, with a blindfold on, than I can take on my very best day. I already knew I was going to look bad before this was over, but now it is official. Welcome, Wetsuit Waffle. Be nice and don't laugh at my bad photos or I will have Hannah beat you up.

In other blog-related trivia, I have finally updated all the broken links in my blogroll after about 20 of you changed your locations. And I have newly linked a few people who I have read for a long time or have recently started reading, and in doing so, I am effectively de-lurking (yet again) in at least one place. Thus, a big hello to Moriah of Please Pass the Salt!. Moriah is not only the cousin of my good friend Bryonie from Delights and Shadows, but was also one of my cabin-mates at summer camp circa 1997 or so. None of that makes me any less rude for lurking on her blog all this time, but I'm just putting it out there so you know that sometimes I lurk on the blogs of people I have actually met in real life, and do not just exclusively stalk strangers. Yes. I am so normal.

I also want to welcome to the world of blogging to my college friend Katharine, who has started making me laugh over at The Life of Savages. It's a good thing Katharine and Brian live so far away, or I would have a hard time not stealing their little girl Lily away and trying to pass her off as my own daughter in spite of the blue eyes and the fact that she is the spitting image of ... well, both of them, somehow. It's hard to describe.

So stay tuned for a photo a day starting on Monday. And don't laugh when I fall off the wagon on about December 3.

This is not the greatest photo, and I was somewhat hesitant to start the December Photo Project with it, but it's funny when you understand what is happening. On Saturday, we took Kate to the aquarium. There is a part in the Albuquerque Aquarium where there is a big walk-through tunnel devoted to the habitat of eels. Big, slimy, creepy eels. I was worried Kate would be freaked out by them. I mean, I am sort of scared of them. All they do is sit there and and open and close their mouths and never ever blink. And she loved them. After watching them for a few minutes, she turned to us and started opening and closing her mouth in perfect imitation of the eels. I managed to get one picture of her with her mouth open, and as you can see, that eel on the left is helpfully opening his (Her? Beats me.) mouth so you can see what Kate was going for.

I am not sure if this is cheating, but I am going to post a couple of other photos of Kate with her new BFFs, the eels. I have a feeling a year-long pass to the aquarium is going to be on her Christmas list.