14 Months!

 
Yesterday was the first time that Shayna didn't want to hold my hand when walking. Usually, if I'm in the vicinity, Shayna will reach out to me so we can walk hand-in-hand. However, when we left her day care yesterday she pushed away my hand as if to say, "I don't need you anymore, daddy." Unbelievable. Next thing you know she's gonna be able to change her diaper on her own.

Speaking of diapers, Shayna HATES being changed. This kid is like an ant. I swear she can lift eight times her body weight because when I put her down on the changing table she can fend me off and I weigh a heck of a lot more than she does. We're heading back to Vietnam in a couple of months and Huyen's mom has promised that in two weeks there she'll have Shayna potty trained. I'll believe it when I see it.

This month Grandma and Pop-Pop bought Shayna her first pair of shoes. Whenever we put them on her she just knows it's time to walk.  That said, she also likes to kick them off from time to time. Twice this week we've walked into day care and one of her shoes was MIA. The first time I found the shoe in the car and the second time it was in the street. I know one of these days I'll lose a shoe and it'll join the boot and glove I lost last month. Somewhere there's a kid out there with a lot of mismatched clothing. But clothing isn't the only thing we've lost. A few weeks ago we somehow lost our baby carrier. Long story short Shayna was sleeping in it while we were at ShopRite. Then she woke up and wanted to go in the cart. So we put the baby carrier under the cart and forgot about it until we were unloading groceries at home. I drove back to ShopRite and walked through the store, peeking under people's carts to see if the carrier was there. No luck and I'm pretty sure security now has me on some special list for creepy dudes in their store.

Last weekend, while Shayna was napping, Huyen and I looked through photo albums of our Vietnam motorbike trip and our vacations to Myanmar and Thailand. It's a little weird to look at photos of yourself pre-kid and realize how much life has changed. Someone once said (I can't remember if it was a friend or in a movie or in a book) that you never realize how selfish you are until you have kids. I'm not sure "selfish" is the right word (maybe self-centered) but you definitely don't realize how much you only think about yourself until you've got a little one. But hey, nobody's complaining. In fact, we kept saying while looking at the picture, "I can't wait to take Shayna here."