Lillia loves music. When she was a baby, I would sing "Ooh Child" to her and she would smile no matter what.

Despite my lack of talent in the area, I sing to her each night when I put her to bed. This past Christmas, I introduced her to some holiday favorites and it is only in the past few weeks that she has stopped requesting those songs as I put her in her crib.

I haven't bought much new music in a few years because I knew that eventually I'd catch up with the times and get an MP3 player. Matt got me an iTouch as a gift and I've slowly loaded it up with some newer stuff, as well as oldies/goodies.

Lillia has become pretty familiar with several of the songs on my playlist, and when I pick her up from daycare, she usually requests the following in this order:

1. Realize - Colbie Caillat

2. I'm Yours - Jason Mraz

3. Lucky - Jason Mraz and Colbie Caillat

4. It's the End of the World as We Know It - R.E.M. (to which she insists that we both "rock out," a.k.a. headbang)

5. Gravity - John Mayer ("This is good music, mommy.")

6. What a Wonderful World - Louis Armstrong

7. With a Little Help From My Friends - Joe Cocker

8. Several renditions of Hallelujah or, as Lillia refers to them, "Hallelillia."

I knew she liked music, and not unlike myself, hates to be in the car unless there's something playing. But I didn't know how closely she was paying attention to the words until we were sitting down for dinner last week and she broke into song:

     She tied you to a kitchen chair

     She broke your throne and she cut your hair

     And from your lips she drew the hallelujah

     Hallelujah, hallelujah

     Hallelujah, hallelu u u uuu jah

Every word. She sang every word of the verse, including the chorus. And no matter how hard I try, she WILL NOT do it again so that I can record it and put it on YouTube.

Lillia is growing so fast and changing so much I cannot keep up with it anymore. Every time I sit down to write a "Lillia Right Now," I am overwhelmed with all the things she is doing and how she is growing on so many levels that it is hard to put into words. So I hit "Save as Draft" and promise to come back to it later.

But when I sit down at the keyboard again, all I can think about is how I once marveled at my baby learning to clap her hands, and now she skips through the house like a big kid.

I remember when she first caught site of the dogs and made a little cooing sound, and now she calls them by name and kisses them goodnight.

I thought she was a genius when she started talking in complete sentences at such a young age, but now she thinks it's funny to say Mombee instead of Mommy and Daddoo instead of Daddy. How smart is that, to know you are being silly when you replace one sound with another?

Where I once just hummed a random tune or sang songs that I like, Lillia has, since Christmas, preferred that I sing "Jingle Bells" and "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" at bedtime.

As a baby, the only thing she ever watched on the TV were a bunch of colors and shapes in a Baby Einstein DVD. Now she likes to act out parts of her Strawberry Shortcake movie, especially one scene in which Strawberry Shortcake is saving Mr. Longface, a caterpillar, from falling off a cliff. In this act, Daddy is playing the part of Mr. Longface. Lillia, of course, is in the title role.

Our bedtime story routine has changed a little: She likes to curl up on Matt's and my bed instead of the couch now. I prop up the pillows, sit down, lean back, and she scoots right up against me so I can smell her hair while she soaks up a little Bernstein Bears or Princess Baby action.

I used to make her laugh by saying the word 'hiccup.' Now, she giggles uncontrollably when I kiss her all around her ears, neck, and shoulders. And if I DON'T kiss her all around her ears, neck, and shoulders, she'll ask me to. "Mommy, I want lotsa kisses," she says with a grin and anticipation in her eyes. She also enjoys it when I eat her belly button all up - and then go back for seconds. It is SUCH a scrumptious belly button.

I think except for that time she told the rain to stop licking her, Lillia has been pretty oblivious to the weather for most of her life. But like the rest of us, she is so anticipating Spring this year. Every day when we drive past the elementary school at the end of our road, she points out the slide. "There's the blue slide, mommyyy," she says, like "In case you didn't notice, it's right over there and we can easily just pull up, trudge through the two feet of snow surrounding it, and playeee." I can't wait till it's warm enough and our fence is up so that I can just open up the back door, shoo her out, and let her frolick in the yard ALL. DAY. LONG. The Easter Bunny brought her a dinosaur-shaped blow-up kiddie pool and gardening tools this year so, you know, yay!

The potty training is...still in progress. But hey, at least she isn't peeing on me, like back in the day. She is dry almost every morning and all I have to do is be there AS SOON as she wakes up, rush her to the potty, and set her on it. But the only time she actually tells me that she has to pee is when she's being put to bed. It's very convenient - for her. Not so much for me.

The other night, we bowed our heads to say prayers at dinnertime, and I felt Lillia's warm little hand holding mine (she insists now that we hold hands). While Matt was thanking God for the food on our table and asking that we all be kept safe and healthy, I was thanking God for that little hand. I was remembering when I was pregnant and I could feel that hand trying to punch its way out. I would try to imagine what it would be like to have my little girl there in the world with me.

Now, with that little hand in mine, I think, "This is what it's like."

When I was pregnant and constantly researching babies and children, I often saw parents on forums or blogs referring to their kids as "hilarious." I didn't really know how a kid under the age of 15 or so could be "hilarious," or at least, my version of hilarious. It would be - how should I say? - inappropriate, if they were. But more and more lately, I am beginning to see what those parents meant.

Tuesday morning, I went down to Lillia's new bedroom to wake her for our commute into Anchorage. "Baby, are you ready to get up?" I whispered as I rushed around trying to find her socks and boots, and wondering when I'm going to get a new routine down. Her eyes were still closed, her hair was insane, but she immediately lifted her head up off her pillow and said "I eat all the candy!" Apparently, she is having some pretty sweet dreams.

It's a relief, because we really were quite displaced for those two days we were moving, and for a few more after that. I, the mother who only fed Lillia organic foods for the first year that she was eating solids, got her McDonalds for dinner more than once. The second time will be a cherished memory, however, because as Matt and I sat at the drive-up menu one night trying to decide what we would get and share with the kid, Lillia and I both discovered at the same time that they had STRAWBERRY! SHORTCAKE! TOYS! in the Happy Meals. Just as she softly said "Strawberry!" my eyes drifted toward the picture of the cartoon character and I likely scared that teenage employee when I yelled "I need a Happy Meal!" It was the least I could do for ripping the child away from the only home she's ever known.

The first few days in the new house, every time Lillia went near the stairs that lead down to her room, she would say "Yucky stairs." I still don't know what she was talking about, as they are quite clean and there isn't even any peanut butter anywhere near them. Also, whenever I brought her down to her room to play, she would look around for a few seconds and then insist that we go back upstairs. I thought she must have been picking up some bad vibes in the house, and I considered a seance, but the disdain has since passed. I don't believe the move has even fazed her. She has not once mentioned her old bedroom or the old house. She is sleeping through the night and, in fact, even telling me that it is her bedtime each night at precisely eight o'clock.

Lillia takes visitors around the new house, pointing everything out to them as she goes. "This is the couch." "This is a door." "This is Samson" (daddy's mounted deer). Lillia is starting to learn what sounds the letters make, and knows L, M, and D for sure. Her manners are improving all the time, thanks to a little help from that ol' Strawberry Shortcake. It makes it very hard to say "no" when she smiles sweetly and says "Daddy, I have yogurt pleeeeaaaassse?" When I start singing in the car on our drive to work, instead of shrieking in frustration she now just scowls and says "No thank you! No thank you!"

She's been so good that when I went shopping for new bathroom accessories last weekend, I bought her a little stuffed penguin that she kept pointing out. She carried it around like a little baby all day, snuggling and kissing it and saying "It's OK, penguin." When Matt got home and saw it, she said "Look at my penguin!" He said that it was a very nice penguin indeed, and then asked "What's your penguin's name?" She looked at the penguin, then back at her dad, and said very matter of factly, "Him name Dave."

She doesn't really know any Daves... It was very strange. And hilarious.

Lillia is growing more and more independent by the day. She tries to pull herself up onto the couch but struggles, so Matt or I reach to help her. "I want by self! I want by self!" she insists, frustrated that we would have the audacity to interrupt her attempt. It's the same story with putting her pants on, or moving her potty step up to the bathroom sink so she can stand on it before I pick her up to wash her hands.

All that self-sufficiency, however, is apparently not enough to motivate that little kid to give up diapers. I've slowed the training process. I thought perhaps I was putting too much pressure on her. My first hint was when she started running from me, screaming, every time I mentioned pee pee or poo poo.

She is stubborn and driven and knows exactly what she wants, when she wants it. Although I'm sure I'll call it something else when she is a teenager, right now her "spirited personality" is just hard evidence that Matt and I are raising a strong, determined little person who is just that: A person.

She loves peeling bananas, jumping on the bed, splashing in the bath or mud puddles, puppies, fleece or knit blankies, and coloring pictures. She doesn't care much for peanut butter, rain, vacuum cleaners, or being carried when mommy is in a hurry.

Story time is twice as long as it used to be because after I read the story to Lillia, she insists on reading it back to me. She has an amazing memory and can pretty much repeat the books, word for word. Her new bedtime ritual is to point out and name everyone who loves her in the photographs hanging on her bedroom wall. And there are a lot of people.

When I get home from work and she comes running to the top of the stairs, it's all I can do to take off my shoes and hang up my coat before I take two steps at a time to get to her. Somehow, anticipating that kiss at the end of my workday reminds me of a single drop of water falling into a tubful. I think it has something to do with gravity: The drip from a faucet is drawn down. It can hang for a moment before it falls, but it exists only to fall. It's very name is based on the idea that it will fall. And when it does, it is fulfilled.

One day, I was chasing Lillia around the living room, tickling her, kissing her, hugging her. I pulled her close to me and kissed her on the head. When I did, she said "I love you."

She has said "I love mommy" and "I love daddy" for a while, usually with our prompting. But this? This was different. Now, she said I love you. She said it in context. She said it in a moment when I would have said it. She said it like she meant it. For the millionth time since I first knew she existed, my heart exploded.

Drip.

There she was, sitting in the bathtub with all those little foam letters and numbers floating around her. I waited impatiently for her to get some splashing in before saying, "OK, let's rinse." But she picked up a green letter first and asked, several times before I could even answer, "Wassat? Wassat? Wassat?"

"That's a 'Q'," I said. "Q is for a queen and quiet quails."

She played some more, mostly filling a bucket with water then dumping it out over and over again while a lonely train of magnetic turtles and several rubber duckies rolled in her wake. Then she picked up the Q again, said "Wassat?", and before I could answer, answered herself.

"Q."

"That's right!" I screeched, wide-eyed and grinning. How amazing that she had picked that up so quickly. Then I thought about it: Many of the books I read to Lillia each night - and whenever she catches me in a position where my lap is available - are ABC books. Maybe she picked up on some other letters.

She already points at the register at the grocery store and says "Numbers, mommy. Numbers." And when she was in the ER for her asthma attack, she pointed at the monitor and said "Lillia's numbers." She's also recognized and pointed out A and I and the number 8 on several occasions. Like the time we were at a stop light next to a gas station where pump number 8 faced the street. This is no dummy we're dealing with.

So I picked up the letters, one by one, and asked her what they were. A. B. C. D. She got through the first four. She missed a few, then G. I, of course. J. K. L. All but 10. I sat crouched next to the tub, giggling at the strangeness of this little bitty 19-month-old saying "R."

And the next bath night, I tried a different tactic. "Where's the E?" I asked. She looked around. Then pointed. AT THE E. She got about five more than the first night. And at the grocery store that weekend, looking at a sale balloon: "L mommy. L mommy."

She'll point at the letters in her books and say what they are, or ask "Wassat?" about the ones she can't quite remember. When I answer, she always looks at me as though she would like further information regarding this so-called M or the infamous T. As we leave the house, she points at the "For Sale" sign in front of our house. "Letters and numbers," she says. When we're driving around town, she shouts the names of letters from the backseat as we pass by street signs and storefronts. It's like she's finally got confirmation that those are, in fact, the names of these figures, and wants everyone to know that she is fully aware.

Now, if we could just get her to stop peeing on the floor...

Methinks we have created some sort of bipolar toddler, but not the kind where she’s either depressed or psycho-happy. More like the kind where she is either the sweetest huggy, shishy, girly little thing you could possibly imagine or the most stubborn, violent, I-Want-What-I-Want-When-I-Want-It brat there ever was. Her highs are very, very high; her lows are unfathomable.

Case in point: Lillia came into the bathroom the other day as I was getting dressed and immediately went for the cabinets, which aren’t childproofed because we usually just keep her out of the bathroom. I was pulling her away from them and telling her no-no, when she started flailing about, screaming “Pretty! Pretty!” I knew then that she wanted my bracelet. I let her play with it all the time, so I told her just a minute, mommy will get it for you. But she doesn’t have the patience for that, you see, and she just kept kicking and screaming until her apparently unbearably slow mother got the bracelet out and handed it to her.

She calmed down immediately and trounced around playing with my jewelry, going so far as to place it on her stuffed animals’ heads and say, in a sing-songy voice, “Pretty!” When I sat down to play with her she walked over, placed the bracelet on my head and said “Ooh, pretty mommy!” It was so sweet I teared up. And immediately forgot the fit she had thrown not five minutes before.

Lillia has just started putting those kinds of short sentences together – even using adjectives on occasion. Her books aren’t just books anymore; they’re “fishy book” and “Peef book.” She says “bye-bye daddy” and “mommy home” and “pewww, stinky puppy.”

When we were at the cabin last weekend, I knew it was time for bed when I dared rescue her from falling off the deck and she started stomping her feet while turning in circles and crying. I would have thought she was possessed except her head never completely lifted off her neck and exploded. I put her down in the Pack-n-Play and she caught me checking on her a few minutes later. “Mommy!” she yelled. And when I peeked back in at her, she put her arms out and said “hug”. Resistance was futile. I hugged her and hugged her and hugged her, and then she smiled and went to sleep.

She still pretty much says “no” to every question we ask her. And it’s not just that she says no that’s so bad; it’s that she says no in that snotty tone that screams “I am spoiled rotten.”

“Do you want some num-nums?”

“No!”

“Are you gonna play nice today?”

“No!”

“Are you ever going to say ‘yes’?”

“Nnnooo!”

But when I ask her what jammies she wants to wear and she pulls them out of the drawer and starts trying to pull them on herself, I’m convinced that she is not a defiant child. When I get her toothbrush out and she roars because there is a lion on her toothbrush, it makes it a little easier to handle her biting down on said toothbrush so that no real brushing can occur.

Sometimes, when I carry her off to bed, she likes to use her fingernails and cat-like reflexes to reach up and rip my lips off.

But other times, like last night, she curls up in my arms with her blanky and just stares into my eyes saying “mommy, mommy” over and over again. Those times, even though I’m the one cradling her, it feels like she is holding me up. And I’m completely helpless.

It is time, once again, for me to entertain the masses with stories about how cute my kid is. Yes, I am one of those people.

Thanks to me, Lillia can now recognize when she has an "owie." I've shown her the little scratches on her hands or legs and given them kisses to make it all better. (It's a requirement for motherhood.) Now, she has started kissing her own owies. And today, when she fell and hurt her hand, she jumped up and stuck her fingers toward me while making a kissy noise and fussing. As soon as I smooched her hand, she smiled and went back to play.

Lillia has never been bad about bed time. As long as she has her blanky to suck on (totally normal, right?), she might sit in the crib and play for a little while, but she usually curls up and passes out eventually. However, I was still pleased when, one day, she sprawled out on her back in the middle of the living room floor and said "Night night." I see it as further proof that she's related to me.

In addition to her love of spontaneous bed times, when I ask "Are you sleepy?", she fake-yawns. And you know how yawns are contagious? Apparently you can catch them from yourself, too, because sometimes her fake yawns are followed immediately by real yawns. I don't know if I should be happy that she has embraced the joy of sleep or concerned about her advanced knowledge of the art of acting. There is teenager-hood to think of, you know.

Another thing I should probably enjoy now because, come her thirteenth birthday, it will cease to exist: Mommy's little helper, who can't keep her hands out of the laundry basket when I bring a clean load up the stairs. She likes to hand me one article at a time until it's all done. Gone are the days when I could just leave them sitting for a few days till I felt like folding. She can hear the dishwasher open from across the house and comes running, yelling "hiiiiii" as she makes her way into the kitchen. She likes to shut the door and, when I'm emptying, hand me the plates and bowls. And today, after she had pulled a bottle of margarita mix out of the liquor cabinet and left it sitting on the floor, I asked her to put it away for me please. She picked it up, went straight for the CORRECT cupboard, put it in there, and shut the door. She knows right where to find the liquor cabinet - another indication that she is, in fact, my daughter.