IRX is a year and a half today. This realization is stunning, exciting, sad...

Recently, we've had a few flashbacks from the past that remind me how little she used to be and how much she has grown in a very short period of time. We attended the premiere of a movie she shot last summer, appearing in the part of "baby." Of course, I am infinitely biased, but she was very good. That is my professional opinion as an actress and a director, and also my gooey melting mother's opinion as well. She was cute, cried on cue, stopped on cue. Possibly sound editing had a lot to do with this, but like to think not. And oh - she was amazingly and impossibly small, a BABY. Now, even though I call her my baby, in reality she is a toddler - an insanely active, reckless, constantly in motion toddler, basically a kid, and practically a teenager!

I've also been trying to sort through all of the photographs I've taken of her in the past year and a half. So far, I've gone from 3500 to 2500, which is no small task - especially when each photo brings me back to the day it was taken, to my memories of what she sounded like, acted like, looked like then. Facial expressions she only made for a while... Facial expressions she makes now, with words attached to them. I see pictures and video of her struggling to roll over, and remember how much time I spent trying to get her to do it how proud of her I was when she did. And then I think of this morning, when she busted her chin climbing over a chair. Or yesterday, when she climbed onto the windowsill and stood there, surveying the room.

Meanwhile, we have a new niece. At two weeks old, she seems like a (gorgeous) creature from another planet - incredible and tiny and alien. She was a pound bigger than IRX was when she was born, and yet - how can it be that IRX was ever that little? It happens so fast. And yet, when I see her next to her cousin P-LO, who is three, she seems so young. Just a baby, really. My baby.