With most kids, you can take one look and say, “Oh, she’s just like her mother.” In the genetic lottery children often come out at least looking 60/40, 70/30 or even 100 percent like one parent or the other.

Not so with girlie. I think she’s a dead-on 50/50 of her mother and myself. This look, that mannerism. She gets a little from mom, a little from dad in what appear to be equal helpings. (Except with the talking with the hands; I don’t know where she gets that from.) But when it comes to sleeping: That seems to be all-dad.

After night shifts I and make a habit of checking on her when I get home. I creep upstairs and pull the comforter up on her if needed, or just watch her for a minute. Yeah, I’m a sappy dad. But anyway, the other night I found her with her blanket, Mack, wrapped tightly around her face. I laughed, hard, and took this picture.

I sleep with a pillow on my head. I don’t know why, and can’t remember ever not doing it. But I do. And, beside the blanket incident, I’ve also caught girlie sleeping with a pillow on her head, and with Bo, her bear (pictured, in back) covering her head as well. So it’s clear she has some natural compunction to bury her head in pillows, bedding, whatever in order to comfortably sleep.

I also, on occasion, sleep with my eyes open. I’m told it’s creepy. Girlie also does this, so it’s not just the pillow thing.

You would think a child would learn sleep peccadilloes. But she seems to have picked these things up naturally. It’s not like I spent nights teaching her these things. So I’m calling it genetics. At least until I’m proven otherwise.

Girlie has a big girl bed now.

It happened before I knew it. Of course, I couldn’t stop it. She just keeps growing. So last weekend I converted our IKEA crib to a toddler bed. It looks so small, yet it meant such a big change to her. She spent hours in her bedroom in the days after.

Get in bed. Get book from bookshelf. Get back in bed. Out. Grab toy. Back in bed. She was infatuated. I was delighted.

She never tried to climb out of her crib. I feared she would, and suspected she could if she tried. But we were never awakened in the night by a thump, punctuated with a cry for mommy or daddy.

The first night, she went right to bed. I tucked her in and we didn’t hear a peep. The second night, I think I had to put her back in bed three times. Each time, I grew more frustrated. But we did this for a reason: so she could get up, and potty in the night. I tried to keep perspective. We’re sick of washing sheets three, four, five times a week.

On the third night, she slept through, but woke us up at about six. She bypassed the bathroom near her room, came all the way downstairs and wanted to use her potty chair in mommy and daddy’s room. Progress.

Yesterday, I busied myself in the basement as I waited for her to wake up. I came back to the first floor to find she had, soundlessly, made her way from the second floor. She had taken her wet diaper off, and I caught her trying to put on a pair of toddler underwear we keep in her diapering basket. Not quit the progress I expected.

But, I gave her a kiss on the forehead for her efforts, and led her to the potty. Girlie has a big girl bed now. You go, girl.

This month, I ran a marathon and saw my little girl turn 2. How’s your October been?

I told Mrs. Blocletters recently that I still can’t believe I can run 26.2 miles. I find it surreal. Four years ago this fall, I hadn’t run longer than a half mile. Now, I’m a marathoner three times over and counting. Not trying to brag, but I have trouble believing it myself.

Also in the disbelief department, our girl is 2. How does time travel so fast?

Girlie, on the warming table minutes after she joined the family.

Girlie, a few days ago, dressed up as an ice cream cone for a Halloween event. She won a little trophy for funniest costume.

At 2, she:

• Responds to most directions with “No!”
• Still isn’t fully potty trained, but whatever.
• Loves to sing and generally make noise.
• Likes swings. A lot. And slides.
• Could probably watch YouTube videos for hours.
• Has only broken 1 iPad.
• Has a bigger vocabulary and more sass than I would have thought.

My wife and I are truly blessed to have such a bright young lady in our lives.

Back to running, I have no idea yet about a next goal. I know I want to keep running marathons, and expect to do at least two in 2012.

The biggest goal for next year: run without injury. I got over that pesky stress fracture in time to race Detroit, but a week later have an unexplained pain running through the top back of my left leg. No idea. I don’t think it’s running related. I just woke up a week after the race with an odd pain. It didn’t bother me to run with it Sunday (5 miles, 8-minute pace), but it does hurt like hell to bend at the waist.

Meh, walk it off.

Aside from marathons, I’m intrigued by ultramarathons and triathlons. Running marathons has left me wondering what else is possible with this body of mine, and amazed at potential I didn’t know was there until I looked.

In the meantime, I’m enjoying what life holds, from family to fatherhood to running to whatever. Thanks for reading.

One of girlie’s favorite books is “Llama Llama Red Pajama,” so finding this pen full of llamas next to the highway near Manistee was a dream come true.

Llama, meet Rachel

Today, girlie proudly announced “poop! poop!” I met her imploring statement with a mix of pride, excitement and relief, and of course a diaper change.

Girlie adds new words and concepts at an alarming rate. This makes me proud. I feel like she — and me by extension — is exceptional, though her vocabulary likely grows at a normal rate. Poop, to me, seems like an advanced concept for someone not even 18 months old. How do you wrap your head around such an event when you can barely use two words together?

If I made a list of the worst aspects of fatherhood, changing diapers would occupy the first, second and third spots. Girlie making her bathroom needs known puts us on the path to potty training. I know, another adventure awaits. But I excitedly welcome the first peek I’ve had in a while of a life without diapers.

That, my friends, is a relief.

Girlie at library story time

I saw a few milestones this week in Rachel’s little life.

Monday, March 28, she put two words together in a very deliberate way, directly to me and in the proper context. “Bye-bye daddy,” she said as I dropped her off at daycare. This wasn’t the first time. On March 19, she kept repeating “Spencer gone” (in her own, mushy pronunciation) when we visited my brother and her cousin, Spencer, left to visit friends. But it was the first time she’d addressed me using two words together to make her point.

The other event marks a subtle shift in independence, a trait she far from lacks. But, I don’t usually see her exercise that independence in strange contexts. I run at the YMCA when it’s cold, since I can’t take her in the jogging stroller and it has child care. A nice woman named Dee helps Rachel feel comfortable while daddy takes to the treadmill.

I’ve taken her to the YMCA child care perhaps a dozen times. Up until the last one or two, she’d hug my leg and whimper if I tried to pry her off. Thursday, we went to the Y and entered the child care room. She ran off without prodding, deposited her bottle and snack cup on a cupboard, and climbed into a rocking chair. “Oh, we’re good,” Dee said. I knew we were.

Rachel gave me and it’s-all-right glance as she rocked, and I made my exit.

Why yes, I was planning to throw a fit.

I suck at blogging anymore. What can I say? Being a dad, husband, runner, etc. takes time. That’s not to say I don’t take those responsibilities seriously, just that time spent on them crowds out less pressing activities.

Anyway, here’s what’s up.

I just finished the Millennium trilogy. Lisbeth Salander ranks high among the most original characters I’ve seen put to paper. The level of detail Stieg Larsson put into the three books reminds me of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I consider myself fiction shy and Larsson not only got me reading, but had me losing sleep.

In high rotation: “Love,” the Beatles remix soundtrack to the Cirque du Soleil show of the same name.

Mrs. Blocletters and watched “The Social Network” on On Demand, adding another Oscar contender to our list of seen-its. Ho-hum. I enjoyed it. But I walked out of “Black Swan” thinking “I’ve never seen anything like that before,” and I had no such feeling for the Facebook movie. I honestly don’t understand the Oscar buzz for it I heard this fall before “The King’s Speech” caught fire.

Things, a to-do manager I bought ages ago for my iPhone, gets a reprieve. The slow-as-all-get-out developer finally added repeating tasks, making the app actually useful. I had given up on it, but came back with the update because I paid $10 for the damn software and need to get my money’s worth.

I gave up on a spring marathon. Back pain kept me from the start of training for the inaugural Kalamazoo Marathon. Inertia got the best of me after the back pain went away. I want to run a marathon just for the hell of it (i.e., not a formal race) in the first half of this year, but we’ll see. I can still run seven or eight miles without too much complaint from the body, so the baseline remains.

Oh, and this weekend’s Coolest. Thing. Ever: Using a hack from YouTube, I made an iPhone stylus from a piece of a telescoping antenna and a bit of conductive foam. I stuffed a piece of foam, packing material for a $2 transistor I bought at Radio Shack, into the end of a length of antenna, also from the Shack, and voila, touch-screen love.

And our toddler is growing into a little girl faster than I can brace for it.

I downloaded Hipstamatic recently, and get a kick out of the results. Posts on Facebook from a former coworker reminded me I wanted to check out the iPhone app. Thanks, Lisa.

Baby Blocletters goes retro

I fathered a mixed-race child. Honestly, I don’t give her “mix” much thought, and don’t think twice about the idea of people marrying and (gasp) having children across racial lines. Mom didn’t raise me like that.

So, I was taken aback on a trip to a local hardware store this week by a comment from the cashier. I dashed in to buy light bulbs and trudged up to the register with the bulbs in one hand and my daughter in her carrier in the other. The older woman took the cash and began cooing. “She’s beautiful!” she said.

I’ve gotten used to the coos. I think my girl is beautiful, and regular comments from strangers just reinforce my bias and warm my heart. Then the woman said one of the most ignorant things I’ve ever heard.

“Have you had her since birth?” she asked.

I paused for a second, my brain trying to find a word. “Um … yes,” I responded. I found myself, for reasons I still don’t understand, not wanting to lecture or embarrass a stranger.

Adoption has a nobility to it. Taking responsibility for a child where the parent could or would not ranks among the more selfless actions I can think off. But obviously this woman, a nice white lady of about 65, reads too much People, and thinks brown babies must come from Malawi.

But beyond my daughter’s provenance, this woman questioned the idea that people of different races might marry or have children. In 2010, with a black president in the White House, I kinda thought this question was settled. The Supreme Court ruled on Loving v. Virginia in 1967, a generation and a half ago.

I fairness, I don’t know this woman’s background. Still, while Oakland County, where she at least works if not lives, has a population about 80 percent white, it’s hardly homogeneous.  One in five residents counts as non-white. Surely she’s met whites who married blacks or Asians or Hispanics. Mrs. Blocletters and I enjoy the friendships of several interracial couples. It’s not rare by far.

And notice I said ignorant, not stupid. She doesn’t know my family. But, while ignorance isn’t its own excuse, I can’t wish it away either. I can wish, however, that ignorant people think for a moment before they speak. Even if you suspected a child was adopted, why would you ask a stranger such a question?

Clearly, ignorance is here to stay and I need to come up with a better response than a dumbfounded “yes” next time I get this question. How about: “No, I won her in a card game a few days ago. Cute, isn’t she?” I’m interested to hear other snappy responses. Feel free to leave them in the comments or hit me on Twitter of Facebook.