Given that I spent last New Year's Eve birthing a baby, I was pretty much happy to do anything else this year. We went out to dinner with Liz and Eric at a hip new street food restaurant on Capitol Hill. We were supposed to have a birthday party for Gloria on New Year's Day, but Charlotte got a case of the barfs so we had to postpone to the following weekend. Matt made her a panda carrot cake, and we repurposed Charlotte's second birthday banner into a first birthday banner for our littlest pup. But apparently the party was a bit of a germ fest. Matt and I contracted Cs stomach bug, G got a really bad cold, which Liz and Nathaniel also came down with, then Nanni got a sinus infection, I got the cold, and then Poppi got the stomach bug and Charlotte got the flu. Bleached our house top to bottom 3 times! We had to cancel our trip to San Francisco, and unfortunately Charlotte was still sick on inauguration day and was not able to join me in the women's march. So between a plague of illnesses and a megalomaniac taking over our country, January has not been the best month!
Gloria is up to all kinds of new tricks. Her favorite pursuit is climbing in and out of her little orange chair or rolling around and climbing on the sofa or on pretty much anything she can get on top of. She's getting very good at signing for more, waving hello and goodbye, and of course her favorite clapping. I wouldn't say she really has any words yet, although she sort of says more and mama and hi dada. She loves walking around the house and can now do it holding just one hand. She loves to push her push cart around and climb in and out of it. Her favorite toy is whatever Charlotte is holding in her hand, usually a Barbie. She has a very keen eye for issues of equity and fairness, and she's always scoping out the dinner table to ensure there's nothing that anyone else has on their plate that she has not gotten her fair share of.
