The baby and the big girl

Tori is 4 moths old.
I can't believe this time last year I was headed for nausea and growing pains. I had to wait out the months, weeks, days, and finally the hours to meet the beauty who now holds my heart in the palm of her slobbery little hand.
She makes me beam with pride.
I could post a daily bulletin about how she's changing and making us watch her so closely and admire every last second of her baby-hood. It's a gift, a treasure and I will never get over how fast it goes by.
Today I got out the high chair. She will start eating rice cereal today. I am taken back to Bella's first cereal bites and those faces she made we caught on camera. She was so small. But, now that Tori is 4 months, she seems HUGE and advanced and different. Because Bella was my first, I didn't know she was getting so big, I had no frame of reference.
These days Bella is an animal. The type of animal that you need strategy and training to handle. The strategy must first be coy and attention to her must never cease or there could be blood. She's very attune to the weaknesses in us. She plays us like a fiddle and she's not above pitting one of us against the other. She has us breaking out the parenting books and having strategy meetings behind her back. The trouble is she's always going to be our first child and the "guinea pig" of our rearing education. She sometimes presents challenges and embarrassing moments proving that we need to keep up with the task at hand called parenting with love.
I love this job of the matriarch and the nurturer. I have moments of tears and despair. But, I love the fact that I am needed and no matter what EVER happens I love my girls!