Lily learned to kiss today - we kept thinking she was trying to attack our faces by biting us, but instead it turns out she was actually trying to “kiss” us. Half the time she puts her tongue out so we get licked, but it’s still really cute. We told her to kiss her stuffed bear today and she did - she puts her lips against the animal and just stays there for a minute, then starts giggling. I told her to kiss daddy, and she did the same thing. She doesn’t quite get the smacking sound, but it’s still really great - 14 months and finally she can be demonstrative. And we thought her hugging us was the deal! I still love that - but the kissing is even better. I attribute it to grandma’s insistence that she “kiss the grandma”, which usually meant grandma was about to get licked by the lizard child.
Mike had a snow day today and we did some stuff around the house and played with Lily. I bought some huge bin organizer thing at Target today and now all of Lily’s toys are more neatly arranged. She thought it was Christmas in January - she hadn’t seen a lot of those toys in a while and spent the night ripping the bins out and dumping them on the floor. I just cleaned them up again. Matt taught her to pull her “kitchen” on to the floor so that’s her new favorite thing - it makes an extremely loud crashing sound that she seems to appreciate. And this is the same child who is afraid of the vacuum cleaner. Go figure.
Tomorrow I’m “schlepping all over town” as Mike puts it (he thinks we’re going to crash the car because the roads still aren’t clear). I’m taking Lily down to Midlothian so I can do a business meeting and then put together the remainder of my office, with some help from my father. I now have two desks and a filing cabinet to put together, as well as a ceiling fan to help cool the tropical environment caused by the radiated heat set at an ungodly high level. I usually just leave the windows open, but you gotta love Richmond - when I do that, I am greeted by the screams of bible psalms and “Daddy, Daddy, don’t kill me” from the anti-abortion activists who stand outside the Ob/Gyn clinic right next to my office. They also put up really heinous graphic pictures of fetuses as well, and scream “Baby Killer” at all the women who come in. One of the first times I had to go through their line, they screamed that at me, and then saw the car seat in the back. Since then, they have stopped screaming at me, but I still call the police when their chanting gets far too annoying. I feel sorry for all those women, but I worry more about the doctors and nurses - you just have to wonder how far they will go. I kid you not, this one guy is out there 10 hours a day, every day. I feel like screaming, “GET A JOB!” at him, but that would be rude.
