Sixteen months ago, the day before the last presidential election, The Baby Girl (now Toddler Girl) was born.

The Toddler Girl looks younger than most kids her age, since she has very little hair, only six teeth and is in the 20th percentiles for height and weight. She makes up for her lack of stature, hair and teeth in other ways though. She says a lot of words, including "NO!" and important words for a girl like "shoes" and "nummy" (whenever she sees me trying to sneak a piece of chocolate behind her back.

We've started keeping all the chairs on top of the tables in both the dining room and kitchen, because although not the classiest of looks, it keeps her from climbing and falling off the tables. Which is not to say that we can keep her from injuring herself as she runs, jumps, climbs and explores. In one recent twenty-four hour period, she bit her tongue, bruised her chin, bumped her head, pinched her finger and bloodied her nose.

The Toddler Girl is a jokester. Her most recent game is biting her toes when she's getting her diaper changed. She waits for me to express mock horror and prompts me with a grunt and a kick, if the "Hey!" doesn't come soon enough. Then she laughs maniacally and does it again.

She holds her own against her siblings now, and they are starting to therefore be less tolerant. Now that she comes up and grabs toys away from them and screams "No!" when she thinks her "property" is being threatened, they are less willing to share and more likely to play hunter and trap her in a box. If I could be a neutral third party scientific observer, I think this three-way sibling rivalry could be fascinating. Instead I wish I had a cone of silence to hide in.

It is interesting to watch them grow up though and the Toddler Girl -- or Evil Genius Baby as she is sometimes known around here -- is no exception. She's beautiful, sweet, and sometimes slightly evil.