Baby No More

If I thought Fiona was fully into Toddlerhood before, I've realized it's only the beginning. This Fiona is a jumping, galloping, climbing, talking, talking, talking, opinionated bundle of energy. Her first recognizable sentence, "Bah eet-tchoo." I only recognized because it was in context of her actions. While eating lunch, she mimes feeding Little Bear, my deductive reasoning leads me to translate to "Bear eats, too." I'm impressed, and only wish that I could understand more of her talking. During the day there are periods of silence but unless she's up to something untoward, those silences generally last only a moment. This morning I saw her with our camera, explained to her that it isn't a toy, that if she didn't volunteer it to me then I would take it from her, she thought about it, "NO, Mii-e"---a phrase I have heard a lot lately. Of course I ended up taking it from her, instead of the much preferred voluntary relinquishing. I'm not sure where this, "Mii-e" (read: mine) came from, it's not as if Gary & I wander about hording objects and exclaiming, "MINE!". I can only guess the Toddleator adopted it from observing another child, possibly older. GREAT. Now, whenever she has something she wants to keep, well, one can guess her oft-used response.
Fiona is not a baby any more, she's too active to want to snuggle, and too tenacious and opinionated to be coerced without inexhaustible patience. I feel a little sad that her babyhood is over already, still excited about what will happen next though. Part of me wants to see what combination of genes we might create a second time, on the other hand, I'm not sure I want to start the entire process all over again.