It’s 2009! And I really only have a few goals:

1. Get my butt in shape for the Flying Pig Marathon in May. I’m running a leg of this marathon (a relay, if you will) and I really need to get to a point where I’m doing at least 7-10 miles on my long runs. The only real challenges are these: The time I have to run is late at night when the baby is in bed.  Also, I no longer have a running partner.

2. Get in tight with the cool kids and the IxD/UX crowd this year — specifically, I’d like to suss out the Columbus-based (or even Midwest regional) UX-space talent and get them involved in the goings-on of the IxDA organization. Wish me luck.

3.  Redesign the blog — possibly separate the personal/family ramblings from the professional postings. It’s such a tricky balance to do this, as I’m really afraid no one will ever read the professional stuff. I think I’ll put this design effort off until a little later this spring, as I really need to consider that my schedule is full up with work, baby, and my trip to Vancouver for Interaction|09.

4. Find a way to convince the husband that we should adopt another greyhound.

5. Help father and sister find sustainable and meaningful work.

I have my hands full.  What’s on your plate?

Here’s your Wednesday morning coinslot! It’s the last coinslot of 2008, ya’ll!

Gramma and PawPaw bought The Pink One a very pretty red dress for Christmas.  As it would happen, Oma and Ditdit brought pretty little red patent leather shoes that coordinate so nicely with said dress. She is quite the sight.

Note: that’s her necklace that she insists on wearing nearly every day.

Sock Monkey Hat by Delux. z0MG! The perfect hat for my little monkey! Thank you, Stephanie of Los Angeles!

I’d like to share a few of the high points of your last few weeks. You’ve learned a slew of cool things since the last letter, and I’ve only documented a few here for posterity. This month I’d like to announce to the public at large your brand-new fascination with “accessorizing”, as you have now started playing dress up with mommy’s stuff. Clearly you have noticed that your momma is a bit of a girlie-girl herself, or perhaps your fashion sense is, in fact, formed in utero. Either way, I find your taste in adornment fairly reasonable with only one notable exception: my panties are generally not acceptable as necklaces, no matter how festive or shiny or decorative they appear. I’m pretty sure all the emo kids aren’t into neck panties either, but I don’t have my finger on the pulse of current pop culture aesthetics. For all I know, panty could be the new black.

There was a short phase you went through this month that I found rather funny. You’ve started your own debate club with your daddy. In short, he was trying to teach you to say “Daddy”. It went a little something like this:

Your daddy (YD): “Dah-dee.”

You: “Mah-mah.”

YD: (more emphasis) “DAH-dee.”

You: “Mah-MAH.”

YD: “Dah-DEE.”

You: “a-MAH-Mah.”

YD: “No, Daaah-deee!”

YD: “A-MAH-MAH.”

As it turns out, your verbal sparring only precludes the latest in your personality development: THE TANTRUM. You, my little precious baby, have your glorious moments of beaming sunshine-awesome-child, but one little setback can turn you into a willful, belligerent toddler she-beast. I’ve witnessed the transition several times now, and each time I am stunned at the speed of your transformation and the ferocity of your toddler anger.

I know you would want us to take your outbursts as seriously as you deliver them, but as a coping mechanism, the Good Lord has seen it fit to give us the gift of humor. Dear One, when you see fit to pick a moment to pitch the most hellacious conniption you can manage, you’ll one day understand why your daddy and I have to turn away, biting our lower lip and trying SO HARD TO NOT LAUGH AT YOUR RAGE. We’ll try harder to hide our giggling fits from you in the future, for reals.

Related: The skills I’m learning this month are Tantrum Neutralizers and Distraction Techniques, which is kind of like toddler tantrum Krav Maga: Redirect, Control, Attack, and Takeaway. Gotta stay one step ahead of you, sugarplum.

Your daddy, as you’ll soon learn, is quite schooled in the art of the subtle pester. You yawn, he’ll stick his finger in your open, gaping mouth and poke your tongue. You walk past, he’ll snag a belt loop on your pants to stop you mid-step. In the off chance you happen to be wearing lower-cut pants and you just so happen to bend over, he’ll be sure to drop some foreign object down your coin slot. Take my word for it: he will do it. Yes, we call it a “coin slot” in this house.

The other night while you were strapped into your highchair, your daddy decided just then to tickle around your ear with the back end of a ball point pen that was nearby. Of course, you flinched and giggled, bending your head down in an effort to evade the caress of this strange object. This reaction only spurred your father, as then he began to tickle around the opposite ear. The two of you carried on for the next few minutes: you giggling and grinning, your daddy gently chasing the pen around from ear to ear, bedeviling you.

Eventually he grew tired of the game, and placed the pen down on the table next to you. Being your father’s daughter, naturally you snatch the pen and then proceed to stick the pen in your ear. Then you reached out, pointing the pen at your daddy’s ear. Who says kids don’t learn?

Hey Reese, we’re finally getting somewhere with this walking business! I’ve now coached you through several unassisted steps, and you like to practice standing in one place for upwards of a minute or two before you collapse onto your posterior in a fit of giggling. You seem to know that you are on the brink of something big - I can see it in the look on your face when you practice cruising from the couch to the table to the wall to the entertainment center to another chair to the desk to the other couch to the wall to the baby gate. Very ‘recently’, as in ‘just a few hours ago’, you’ve taken SEVERAL UNASSISTED STEPS across the room and I’ll made my prediction: You’ll be walking by Christmas. Now don’t make mommy a liar.

My favorite new name for you this month is Kissy Van Smoochy. Why is this? Well, because lately I have been watching you interact with your stuffed toys and your dolls. There is one particular baby doll that you treat very differently than the rest of your toys. I suppose this is because she’s looks enough like an actual human baby that you tend to carry and hold her much like I carry and hold you.

One night as you were playing and I was sitting next to you, you scampered into my lap, grabbed the nearby baby doll and pulled her up into your arms. You looked up at me, grinned your sweet toothy grin, then bent down and planted a loud, smacky kiss right on the top of her head.

Just like I do to you.

In fact, you’ve become quite skilled at the art of the kiss. Long gone are the days of the aimless, sloppy open-mouth baby kiss — now we get closed-mouth, lippy kissy-noise kisses. I think your daddy and I have started competing to see who gets most kisses from you every night. I think he gets more than I do, but at least I know *who* taught you how to give the smoochies.

The other night I came home from work and you and daddy met me at the door. I thought you were going to explode from the excitement! Smiling, hiccup-laughing, waving your arms — I don’t even know what I did to merit such an enthusiastic response, but I will tell you one thing: there wasn’t anything better in the world at that very moment then to have you be so happy to see me.

Here’s the wee destroyer, triumphant over her latest kill.

And now, I must call “Babies ‘R’ Rid-DAMN-diculouslyExpensive” and hassle their furniture department about my weak-slatted crib, only to be told “I’m sorry, but there is nothing we can do about it” culminating in either me sobbing in defeat or threatening to call my lawyer. Seriously, folks. A 15-month-old girl child should not be able to break a wooden slat.

On second thought, what have I been feeding her?

Absolutely. Classic.

According to C, she let out one wail, but no tears. So epic meltdown isn’t her Santa-style. Though looking at this Santa, I’m not sure why not. SANTA IS NOT EVEN LOOKING AT THE CAMERA AND WHAT IS HE DOING WITH HIS MOUTH?!

My daughter just gave me two real kisses - one on my neck and one on my shoulder - as I lifted her out of the crib this morning. She even made the little puckery kissy sound most people make when blowing kisses, which is a skill she hasn’t mastered until now.

I’m floating a few inches off the ground now.

Just get a load of this little pixie! You can almost see the little imp starting to take shape even in her earliest photos. I still want to chew on those round cheeks.

And she fits in our luggage! Truly efficient and a timesaver for packing. Best of all, she seems to enjoy the inside of our suitcases as long as we promise to drag her around the house by the handles.

The weather has changed, the winds are chilling,  and it has become apparent that sweater jackets won’t be doing much to keep the smallest Philipsen warm. Therefore, I journeyed out this weekend to get a new coat for the wee one and I have to admit: I’m impressed with how ridiculously cute Reese is in her tiny plaid peacoat. The hat and mittens were a TOTAL BONUS.  I just wish they made hats like this for me.

Tonight you literally tackled me when I came home from work. While you weren’t actually walking when you tackled me, you crawled really fast and then sort of pounced on me. You’ve clearly been watching football with your daddy again. Only Terry Tate “Office Linebacker” puts the pain on people like that, girl. Next time you pull something like that on me, I wanna hear a “WOOO WOOO!! PAIN TRAIN!!” out of you first.

Little one, you are doing such awesome things this past month that I cannot keep up with your changes. You literally evolve faster than I can type this letter, faster than I can compose the thoughts into cogent sentences, even. It’s so apparent that you are hurtling about a hundred miles an hour to toddlerhood right now, and Lord knows I’m in way over my head over here. Despite my feelings of inadequacy, you have been a source of non-stop comedy for me and your daddy. Let’s review, shall we?

Your Second Halloween. Remember this? You were THE cutest Sock Monkey Baby this side of the Mississippi. Good Lord your mother COULD NOT snap you in correctly into your costume, thus the effect was that you looked a little misshapen in the lower limb areas, which is, oddly enough, common in most variations of actual sock monkeys. I’m sure no one noticed because you were so blindingly adorable with a tail.

The Catastrophic Shit Storm of 2008. Reese, I saved you from putting poop in your gob but I couldn’t save the bathmat from your arial assault. I have managed to restore the general cleanliness of the bathroom, but not without copious amounts of bleach, scrubbing, and perhaps some swearing. As a new mother, I realize these lessons sometimes come hard and fast and often times they are disgusting and horrible and smeared everywhere. LET US NEVER SPEAK OF THIS AGAIN.

Fascination with the Toilet Paper Dispenser and Mad Housewrecking Skillz: you’re quickly earning your street cred as an efficient destroyer of all things tidy and neat. Don’t think for a second that I haven’t noticed you hungrily eyeing up that toilet paper dispenser for the past few weeks. I suspected you were preparing for your inevitable assault, and what absolute joy you would derive from denuding the single-ply sheets from their hapless cardstock core . That toilet paper roll might as well have a huge neon sign on it, garishly blinking “THIS IS AWESOME“. You. Were. Transfixed. I knew that I could police the bathroom all I wanted, but you are crafty and diligent and you would have your way with the toilet paper. OH YES. Now I have the video proof of your calculated and deliberate assailment and the satisfaction it brought you.

The Beginning of The Yap Yap. We’re trying catch you saying Dada or Mama but instead your response thus far has taken the form of a string of the most complicated consonants and vowels and intonations that cannot be phonetically spelled. We have also noticed that you love to talk to, or talk about, everything. You talk to your books, you talk to your stuffed toys. You have conversations with yourself, in your crib, when you wake up every day. You chatter on, explaining what everything is in your lilting baby voice and it really has become one my favorite sounds (next to your father saying “You’re right, honey” or “I’ll clean the kitchen, you just relax”). I think I might look into making podcasts of your conversations so I can take you to work to drown out my cube neighbor or otherwise known as The Guy Who Watches Movies At a Reasonable Volume While Working.

Speaking of books: this next bit will please the book-loving grandmothers that you have. Reese, I’ve never really seen a pre-toddler get SO into books as you have recently. I didn’t read to you earlier in your short life only because the only things that you seemed to enjoy was crying, CRYING LOUDLY, or getting boob. You were always kind of like “meh” and considered books to be in interesting only in the capacity that you could rip their pages out or throw them on the floor or put them in your mouth. Something this month has changed in you, and now… you don’t destroy the books anymore, but you review them over and over again. And your favorites (i.e. any of the “Peekaboo Baby” tomes) are ones that we will read several times a night before bed. You’ll pick out a book, drag it over to me, scramble up into my lap and proceed to look at each page. When finished with the fifth or sixth pass of said book, I try to introduce a new one but you push the new book away in protest, insisting Not this book! THAT book. THAAAAT BOOK!! GAAAH!! So, we’ll “read” your preferred book until I cannot manage the requisite sing-song “PEEKABOO” any more.

REESE. YOUR WILL. IT HAS BEEN MADE KNOWN.

So my doctor once told me that the span of four to eight months is considered the “Golden Age of Babies”: named such as this is the time frame where babies start to exhibit interactive behaviors, start to eat foods not originating from boobs, and are not typically mobile (which I’m quickly finding out was a good thing). Right now, the rate at which you absorb and then demonstrate your new-found knowledge is dizzying enough to me, but the really amazing part is how much I’m learning about you. I’m thinking my doctor is wrong. I think the Golden Age is starting right now. It’s like a switch has been flipped recently, and you can so accurately mimic our sounds and motions and routines. Tonight, you watched me do the “cheek pop” with my finger over and over. And you know what? You attempted to make the same sound, using the same motions, and then you laughed that glorious hiccup-laugh that tickles my soul.

This month you’ve learned to grunt (like your daddy), blow kisses (to your momma), wreck the toilet paper, brush your teeth with your special toothbrush, brush *my* teeth with the same toothbrush, and whenever you take a drink of any beverage, you make that “ahhhhhhhhhhhh” sound of utter refreshment every single time. I think it’s the same sound I make when I pick you up out of the crib each morning, hug you tightly, and breathe you in.

Love,

Momma