Jenna Glatzer, Ghostwriter

Whoever invented baby sign language gets an A+ in my book. Sarina now tells me when she's tired or hungry. She does the sign for "sleep," and if I don't pay attention fast enough, she grabs my hand and does the sign for sleep with my hand, too. And she does the "eating" sign roughly every 3 minutes... 'cause the girl likes her snacks! She's a sign language whiz, I tell you. She knows: more, cereal, moon, stars, eating, hat, love, sleep, bib... Her first birthday is so close now (March 2). I can't believe her baby year is almost over already. I'm not going to have a baby anymore... I'm going to have a toddler! I'm not ready for that! But anyway... have some new pics. I hope they make you smile. Thanks to Amanda and and Lisa McGrath for the great lounge set! Amanda made the pants and Lisa made the shirt.

As I passed him, a man working at a booth in the mall whistled. At me. Probably at me. I mean, I'm almost certain. I was wearing my winter coat and pushing a stroller containing my exquisitely wonderful 11-month old, which made it more exciting to get whistled at. It's funny how, when you're under 30, you want to clobber the louts who wolf-whistle at you. When you're over 30, you think maybe you should give them $5 tips, those sweet gentlemen! So I walked away thinking, "Go, me. That classy mall worker thinks I'm a hot mama. It must be so! This bulky coat can't contain my explosive inner hottitude." But then I second-guessed myself. Maybe there was a gorgeous little college woman walking next to me and I didn't notice her because I was too busy cultivating my inner hottitude. Maybe that was someone else's whistle that I was taking credit for. And I briefly contemplated walking back to the mall worker and asking, "Excuse me, but was that me...

Congrats to Jennifer at The Word Cellar , who won herself a copy of The Street-Smart Writer . If you haven't already, go read the comments on my giveaway post-- they're great.

Sarina has really never been around babies or kids. There just aren't any in my family (I'm the oldest among all the siblings and cousins, and the first to have a baby). So I brought her to Gymboree last week, in part to see how she'd react. There was only one other baby there (9 months old and petite, whereas Sarina is a giant, so they didn't look close in age). So the sweetest thing was that Sarina kept crawling her way over to the baby, trying to play. She tried to pass a ball to her, but I don't think the other baby was interested. Still, Sarina waved to her at the end of class. I nearly cried from adorable overload. I brought her back this week, and there were bunches of babies! And what she wanted to do was touch the babies. She would crawl over to a little one, then touch a leg or arm or whatever. She often tried handing them her toys-- she's REALLY into sharing. No one took her up on her offers, though. One baby boy was standing, and she used his leg to ...