Mallory, right now

Last month when it was time to summarize what's new, I couldn't think of anything. But lately I have been making notes on Mallory left and right. I need to get them down before the 9th of the month rolls around and once again, I can't think of anything to say.

I alternately find Mallory completely exasperating and completely irresistible. She has a stubborn streak like nobody's business. She is more well-spoken now at 1 than I think I was when I was twelve. She is fearless. She's smart as a whip. On the weekend Chad announced that he was going to the gym, and left the house. Two minutes later I found her trying to get out the door with her rubber boots on. She said she was going to the gym to exercise. Now, Chad said he was going to the gym, but didn't specify that he was going to exercise. That she made that leap still astonishes me.
She still likes dancing to Beyonce and High School Musical, but what really gets her shaking her can is the "Everybody Wants to Be a Cat" party sequence in The Aristocats. Here she is dancing to it shortly after I told her she was not allowed to go to the gym. She's still sporting the rubber boots.

A few weeks ago, she instantaneously turned into a Daddy's Girl. Before then, she could take him or leave him. Now she is completely all over him. She wants him to dress her and read her bedtime story and brush her teeth, and when he comes in the door at the end of the day she throws herself at him. (At the same time she has picked up a few new sayings for me: namely, "Go away!" and "Get out!" Really.)

She runs into the kitchen from the playroom every two minutes while I make dinner: "Is supper ready? Is supper ready?" And then she never eats any of it.I have never seen her walk down the hall from the kitchen to the playroom or back again. It's a full-out sprint.

After the nine months of nightly grief when she was a baby, she was the world's best sleeper up until a couple of weeks ago. Now she is suddenly up every night, crying for me. Sometimes she settles back to sleep easily, and sometimes she's bereft when I leave. We're hoping this phase passes quickly. Me especially - it's causing my Oscars hangover to linger.