And here we are...

Lilli just had her half birthday. I think, my last real entries before these most recent was for her second birthday.  It saddens me that I didn't get a chance to record so many amazing moments. Too many adventures and stories lost in the chaos of time moving too fast.  Especially, making her first best friend, the stories she tells now and the development of that skill, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, potty training continued (still), her first major scary boo-boo, learning to jump, learning to care about what other people think, being generally cute and funny.

All of those things can only be seen in photos and very few videos. I won't get to look back at my thoughts on how she experienced her first pony ride, sitting on Santa take two (success), becoming way too independent for my aching heart.  I can only hope I can get some down now, or remember them when she's older, to form the words and memories from photographs.  Maybe it won't seem like such a long time when she's older and those six months will feel like an instant.  For my own record, it was an amazing six month of progress. She grew six months closer to the person she will be, and so far that person is amazingly awesome.

There are a few things I'd like to get down before they disappear.  Hopefully, I have a chance to share them over the next few posts. Maybe one of the most intriguing, to me at least is, quirks of hers is this obsession with Oswald.  An extremely polite and friendly octopus who lives in "Big City" with his dog wienie.  He has a best friend and neighbor, an ornery penguin named Henry. And his other bff is an overly friendly flower named Daisy.

It all started with Taz getting renamed Wienie.  Lilli was Oswald, sometimes getting extremely upset when you didn't refer to her as such.  And eventually, Dave became Henry and I became Daisy.  We play along because if we don't there's a meltdown. Most days it's cute. Other day's it's not. Sometimes I worry about how long it's normal to pretend obsessively that each member of the family is playing a part.  With the exception of poor Linus, who has been excluded from her imagination.  It seems our cat and Lilli aren't the best of friends since the "chair" incident.

Things could be worse, she could be pretending to be a violent character or using her imaginary characters to act out in some way.  Instead, she's learning to be polite, share and be a genuinely good friend and person to others.  She's learning about octopi and penguins.  And the best part is that we're part of the cast in her imagination.