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Sydney went to the doctor on Tuesday for one of her regular checkups and is now 30" tall and weights 22lbs.

I don't know if we previously posted the status of her teeth but she has all by her 4 corner canine teeth. At present she has 4 molars and 8 front teeth all of which are currently useful. That means she can pretty much eat anything we eat as long as she wants to.

In the mornings we've been handing her a little tooth brush while we brush our own teeth. She's trying. We'll keep working on it.

For breakfast she's been eating mini-bagels (or toast some days) with cream cheese, granola bars, and bananas. In fact, starting last Sunday I tried partially peeling a banana and handing it to her so she could eat off it like a big person and not get her hands all sticky. She can do as long as she picks it up correctly. If she picks it up with the peeled banana part pointing down, she hasn't figured out how to turn it over.

Yesterday afternoon Sydney also fed herself a cup of yogurt with a spoon.

Starting Monday was Sydney's first full official day in the Monkey room. So far so good. She's adjusted to the one nap schedule pretty well at this point although she's clearly out of gas at bed time.

In other news, Sydney now has more pairs of shoes than I do. Today she's wearing a pair of pink canvas Converse shoes (think classic Converse). She also has the classic white Keds that seem to have always been a staple of young female fashion. There's a few other pairs too, but these were the two that struck me as the most amusing.

Sydney has been doing really well in the Monkey room. She loves playing with the older kids. She participates in all the activities and has a lot of fun. The only bad part about being a Monkey is the drop-off in the morning. Before 8am, all the 1, 2, and 3 year olds get dropped off in one room. Once enough kids of each age get there (or at 8 am, whichever comes first), they break them up into their respective classrooms. Sydney and I usually get there between 7 and 7:30, so she always gets dropped off in the common room.

She really doesn't like this. I think it is just too overwhelming for her at this point. The older kids LOVE her and mob her saying, "Aww, a baby!" The teachers try to hold them back, but it's kind of a lost cause. Also, there isn't always a Monkey teacher there when we arrive, so I am leaving her with a teacher she doesn't know well. All of this adds up to a lot of drama when I try to leave. It breaks my heart, but I usually stand out in the hall for about a minute, then peak back in. She is always happily playing; the tears are just for my benefit!

One day last week, we arrived in the morning and were greeted by Gianna. Gianna is a two-year-old who was obsessed with Sydney when she was a baby. Gianna always wanted to go to the infant room to visit Baby Sydney. She even named her doll Baby Sydney.

On the first day that I dropped Sydney off in the older kids' room, Gianna came over and looked at us suspiciously. "Who is that?" she asked. "It's Baby Sydney!" I said. "But she's not a baby anymore."

Gianna wasn't sure she bought this explanation. "She's big like me?" she asked skeptically. "Yes," I replied.

She continued to look at us suspiciously. Then she said, "She has flowers on her shirt."

"So do you," I said.

"Yeah," said Gianna. "But my flowers are purple."

"Well, nobody's perfect," I replied.

Since that day, Gianna has come over to us every morning and asked, "Who is that?" as if she can't quite believe that Baby Sydney is big enough to play in the big kids' room. One morning, one of the other two-year-olds gave Gianna an annoyed look when she asked her morningly question and said, "That's Baby Sydney," in a tone that clearly said, "Duh; why do you keep asking that every morning, dumb-ass?"

One morning, Sydney was whining as I tried to leave, and Gianna came over and asked in an annoyed voice, "Why do babies always have to cry so much?"

The teacher said, "You were crying yesterday, Gianna. Did you forget about that already?" Gianna got really embarrassed and hid her face in the teacher's chest. Hee hee.

Another interesting thing about our arrival at school is that Sydney will now walk all the way from the car to her classroom, instead of being carried. She will hold my hand while we walk across the parking lot, but once we reach the door, she waves me off. At 1 year old she is already too cool to be seen holding her mom's hand in front of her friends!