Delilah, 30 minutes old.
Delilah goes. She never stops. Ever. Even in her sleep she moves around constantly. She has no time for lying still to have a nappy changed or standing still to get dressed and will absolutely under no circumstance waste her time standing still to have her hair done.
Having said that, there is one time and one time only when she does stop, that is when she is sitting with her Grandpa in his chair. That is the only time she stops. Ever.
Even more than sitting still, she hates being forced to sit still. So much so that she has devised a way of getting out of the high chair harness, the pram seat belt and the carseat restraint. Yep. All three. Like I said, there is no keeping her still. Luckily, for her safety, we discovered an extra attachment for such harnesses which she is yet to figure out, but we are sure it will only be a matter of time.
She goes fast. Sometimes too fast her her own legs. I am surprised we have made it this far without a trip to the Emergency Room. She climbs. Nothing is a challenge and won't give up until she has inevitably fallen off/on/onto something and sustained an injury. She will cry for a few minutes and then be ready to do it all again.
She is attracted to danger like a bug to light. Heights, powerpoints, breakable items, non-edible garden treasures, jumping in the bath, toilet cleaner. Yep, danger and Delilah go together like peas and carrots as Forrest would say.
She yells. It's what she does best, so she does it a lot - yells. On first assumption, one might think she is a disobedient child, always yelling and never, ever sitting still. And, traditionally, that would make up the basis of a child misbehaving. But lucky for her, her parents and older brother know differently.
For, you see, yelling is simply part of who she is. She is a loud individual and from the minute she was born, it was clear she had arrived to be someone. No fading into the background for this one, no following the leader. She was here to stamp her mark on the world and make no mistake about it, she will be in the foreground and be leading the leaders.
She dances, a total groover. Can pick up the rhythm in any song and bop away. She adores music and even sings. And (in case you hadn't already noticed) she LOVES having her picture taken. Her second word was "Cheese". Her first word? Drink. Yep, drink. Closely followed by "Gumpa". Now she can say just about every word ending in "K". Drink, duck, stuck, clock, look, milk, pink, chook. Really, when you think about it, a lot of the words you need to begin like with end in K.
She likes to get involved and find out how things work, taste, smell, how far they spread, how flexible they are, if they are edible, how far they roll, how many you can stack on top of each other, if they bite or sting and who gets annoyed by her doing all of the above.
She doesn't mind getting messy, if fact she quite enjoys it and loves the fact that getting caked in dirt/mud/food or whatever else she can find will always and eventually lead to one of her top ten favourite pastimes - a bath.
She doesn't like to stop although she likes cuddles and "up". But at any given moment she will decide she has had enough and flip backwards out of the cuddler's arms, usually succeeding in giving the cuddler a heart attack at the shock of almost dropping the small girl. After such an event - that is one which involves scare tactics or shock to any present adult, a regular occurrence in Delilah's life - she will invariably follow up with her trademark laugh. Some might say it is decidedly evil, the laugh is cross between Woody Woodpecker and Mr Bean. It comes from the back of her throat and also slighty through the nose and has that deep "heh heh" sound and always leaves you feeling as if you missed the real joke and she is finding something far more hilarious at your expense.
She enjoys being upside down and has already taught herself to do somersaults. I believe this is part of the reasoning behind her unexpected cuddle bungee jumps...its all a ploy to hang upside down for the pure enjoyment of it.
The centre of her world is her amazing big brother. She loves being near him, following him, playing with him and sleeping in the same room as him. She loves it when he reads her stories and shows her interesting things about life that only three-and-a-half year olds know.
She laughs at him a lot and of course he enjoys entertaining her to bring on more and more giggles. Whenever Delilah is with her big brother she knows everything is ok, she goes about life with an air of confidence as if she knows he brother will always be there to fall back on, sometimes literally. She is discovering the many, many advantages to being a little sister each and every day, just as he mother has known and enjoyed for so many years.
Everyday Leo and Delilah go about making more memories and I wonder which ones will be those they laugh about over Christmases as their own children play about starting the cycle all over again. But, for the moment, they aren't concerned about the future. They live for every day in its glory. Every day is a brand new opportunity to play, go on adventures, make mistakes, learn, teach other things and simply enjoy each others company. What a glorious way to be.
Delilah loves horses. She will flick through a newspaper to find an article on the spring carnival, point excitedly to the equine animal and say "Look!" "Giddyup". She has a small plastic horse she takes everywhere, usually transported in the pocket of her overalls.
Lilah with her pet horse
Yes, overalls. Delilah isn't a massive fan of dresses. Or skirts. Or anything disguised as a dress or skirt. She ties to pull them off, that's if you can get it on her in the first place. She has so many pretty dresses, being the only granddaughter after among her six boy cousins. But I'm afraid she is going to be just as tough as the rest of them, no special concessions for being a girl. I got creative one day and sewed her a "field days" dress. I made it from an old neck tie of her Pa's, a tea towel and a cot sheet. That she will wear, the daggiest, cheapest dress she will wear. That'd be right.
Despite not wanting to be put up on the shelf like the precious dainty girl, Delilah does know how to use her big blue eyes, long dark eyelashes, cheeky grin and one dimple to her advantage. Trips to the shops always take three times as long with Delilah as she waves and grins and bats the eyelids at each person and waves like the Queen, invariably drawing in the "Oh isn't she gorgeous" and "Oh, look at those eyes" "You have a beautiful smile" from just about every person she passes. We are already measuring the door and windows for deadlocks. If can charm like this at 15 months....I shudder to think about 15 years. Oh dear.
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