While I was pregnant with Little L, I lost count of the number of ultrasounds my doctors ordered for me. Throughout my last two trimesters, they were concerned that her head was not growing at the pace that it should have been. It wasn't dangerously small, and there was nothing to worry about, they always said ... and yet, more ultrasounds, right up until the last few weeks before her birth. She almost had more pictures snapped of her before she entered the world than she did in the weeks after.

But when we saw her, we knew she was fine. She was a dainty little flower, with facial features that seemed to me to have been chosen and arranged with the delicacy of an artist, gentle strokes of all the best that is babyhood. (With obvious bias, of course.) She was long and lean with an elegant neck and looked like she might be as at home in a tutu as she was in Huggies. As she began to babble, the pitch of her voice sounded like the girliest girl you've ever heard. We soon came to realize there was a reason for all that ballerina-like petiteness, the coquettish smiles and batting eyelashes ... and it defintely wasn't something they could have measured with an ultrasound:

She's a total diva.

We now believe Little L was too busy painting her nails to be born -- probably in preparation for her next photo shoot -- which is why she was eight days late and entered the world only because my doctors told her she had no choice. Was she ever pissed about that. She got over it only because she had to -- there was no going back -- but she often lets us know that she hasn't forgotten that injustice. Rolling over wasn't her thing, either, at least not nearly as quickly as most babies, and neither was crawling. I have side-splitting home video of MJ cheering her sister on as Little L finally tried to get somewhere in our foyer. "You can do it, Baby!" she yelled at her as she walked alongside her army-crawling sister, part lap-swim coach, part Rob Schneider from every Adam Sandler movie ever made. Walking, we knew, wouldn't happen before she turned 18 months old.

She refused to hold her own bottle until just before it was time for her give it up entirely, preferring a parent to stand over her, wielding the milk, so she had two hands free to toss loose Cheerios off the table. Even now, mealtime requires a careful mix of parental chicanery and prop work. She believes she can feed herself with a spoon (even if the only thing she can do is spread sweet potato in her hair), so you must each have a spoon and a bowl of the same food, or she will clamp her mouth shut ... and bat her eyelashes while she does it.

She will not pick up any food that smooshes, such as bananas.

Do not give her apple bites while you eat french fries, because she knows that trick and will have nothing of it.

Want to give her some medicine? Good luck. Our pediatrician once tried to use an inhaler on her in his office. After wrestling with her as she twisted on my lap and wailed like she was dramatizing a scene from the Old Testament, he proclaimed her to be a "formidable foe."

Indeed.

But she's our little formidable foe, and we love her feistiness, her sure-headedness, her deft way of working a room with her smile and her feminine charm. This is my last post for Mom2Mom, and I haven't written much about our littlest person over the eight months that I've had the privilege of working with Sarah Lindenfeld Hall and all the other wonderful moms who make this site work. That's because my oldest child is going through her "force of nature" period, characterized by tornadoes of humor and activity and mischief.

But as I thought of a scene from the life of my stubborn little lovable spitfire of a 16-month-old -- the one where, on New Year's Day, she decided it was time she finally tried to join the walking world, when she ever-so-gingerly removed her steadying hand off a coffee table and took one single step forward -- I couldn't think of a more appropriate person to write about. Little L refused to be underestimated (or overestimated, for that matter) from the moment she came into the world, and she continues to forge her own path, at her own pace, with her own definition of triumph and success, regardless of what those around her think or say. I can't help but believe that those aren't really the makings of a diva. Those are the qualities of every mom I know and respect, who lead with love, demand with conviction and create the best possible lives for themselves and their families, even under the most trying of circumstances.

Here's hoping that you, too, put your best foot forward, straight into all the promise that 2009 holds.

Beth has appeared on Mom2Mom on Tuesdays since last year. And we'll miss her. Keep track of her at MotherBunker and, of course, she'll be back here sometimes. Won't you Beth?