She's amazing.

I know she's my kid and I'm supposed to think everything she does is amazing, but I usually don't dwell on it.  There have been a few moments this week where I've been pretty proud of her, though.

Yesterday I had some returns to do at work but Kelly was busy in the back, so we had a little bit of time to wait.  I showed Tillie the drawers of toys we have there and she was over the moon.  She really liked a number puzzle.  I've seen her do a couple puzzles at home, but they were animal puzzles with a picture of the animal where they go.  They're really not that hard.  The number puzzle she picked was not like that at all.  It was so cool to watch her do it.  She would pick up a piece, look at the shape, and try to fit it in the right place.  I couldn't believe it.  Steven thought it was pretty good too, so that made me realize it wasn't just me.  The only one she had trouble with was the 9.  She looked at it, took the 6 off the board and tried to fit it in there.  But, she's right: they look a lot alike.  (Why don't they make puzzles with 4s and 9s the way we teach kids to write them?  It would make so much more sense.)

Tillie was a great eater until last September.  I don't know what happened, but all of a sudden all of the food she would eat was berries, applesauce, yogurt and babybreakfast from a jar.  Slowly, we've added more foods back into the mix.  This week, I feel like we've finally made it back to "normal".  She's come to realize that I will make her try everything just once, but if she doesn't like it, she doesn't have to eat it.  Last week she didn't want to eat her green beans.  I told her she had to eat one bean, so she opened her mouth to eat one.  She then picked up the fork and ate the rest of them!  Yesterday we had pasta bake with rotini noodles.  She didn't touch them until I asked her to take one bite.  She still resisted a bit, but opened her mouth for a bite.  She promptly spit it out, so I told her she didn't have to eat it.  But then, she picked up her fork, ate all of the pasta and even asked for more ("Eat, eat!") when she saw my full plate.

Yeah, she's pretty awesome.