I blinked.

She’s one. Good Lord.

Three months ago my family moved to the St. Louis area. It’s where I grew up, but new to Nikki. When we got here, Lottie was taking maybe a dozen steps before face-planting. Part of this was because our old apartment was super small. A dozen steps is about the most she had available to her. Our new place is twice as large (at some $400/month less) and has provided her room to stretch. Within a couple weeks she was walking with high proficiency and within a month she was running.

Since birth we have made her food. Tossing fruit and veggies in the blender and whatnot. Now she eats what we have. Burgers, fries, chicken, tacos, pasta, you name it, she eats it. It‘s rather adorable seeing her chow down on a burger, baby bite after baby bite.

And she has phrases. Not so much words. There’s the occasional ball that she calls “puppy” and the exuberant “DADDY!” when I get home from work, but she utters whole phrases in the proper context very frequently. “Imgongetyou!” or this weekend’s “guyswhereareyou?” But even when she’s unintelligible, she’s jabbering almost nonstop.

She dances to music with this adorable arms-crossed-body-twist move, a bobble-head dance move, or just stopping her feet in place. She’s loved music since birth, taking time many mornings to listen to records with me as I worked. We went to a fall festival at a local church last week and there was a hip-hop artist singing and Lottie ran up to the stage and started dancing with this adorable head bob.

The stories go on and all I can hear is David Tennant saying “Don’t blink.”