Baby girl is starting to pick up words and guess what’s her favorite word these days? PEEPEE (which is her way of saying pretty, not that she wants to pee). While pointing to herself vigorously for emphasis.

I never thought having a girl was going to be so different from having a boy but it is.

So here’s how you know you’ve got a girl on your hands. Well, I suppose you can just go straight to checking those girly bits to be sure but then where’s the fun in that?

1. They’ve got to pick their own clothes, usually something pink with flowers or strawberries or rainbows or snowflakes or candy canes.

I used to think that it was a matter of conditioning, where girls end up liking pink because everyone told them that it was a girly color but that’s really a myth. See, since she was born, I’ve been dressing Kirsten in Tru’s hand-me-downs at home which is made up of mostly blues and yellows. But that doesn’t stop her from going pink-crazy every time she sees a pink dress with flowers in the store. “Peepee, peepee” she says, telling me that I should get it for her.

2. They milk every ounce of pain sympathy from daddy.

Baby girl has got it figured out that she gets extra love and attention when she’s in pain so she deliberately knocks her head on the wooden bars of her cot and goes “pain pain, bwahhh…painnnnnnn”, knowing that daddy will rush to pick her up and smother her with kisses.

3. Their idea of being cheeky is throwing cornflakes on the floor.

She gives me an I’m-trying-hard-to-be-cheeky look whenever she does something mildly naughty but never goes all out because deep down inside, she really wants to be good. I don’t have the heart to tell her that throwing cornflakes doesn’t even make it into the top 10 list of things her brother has done to make me lose my marbles.

4. They let you hug and kiss them for as long as you want.

My favorite baby girl time of the day is when she just wakes up from her afternoon nap. She’ll look all pleased with herself as I squeeze her tight and kiss her a thousand times. Then she’ll snuggle on my lap to read books and listen to me talk about stuff for a good 30 minutes. I’ve never gone more than 2 minutes with Tru on my lap.

5. Shoes and bags. Mostly just shoes for now.

All my life, I’ve never owned more than 3 pairs of shoes at any one time – 1 pair of birkis, 1 pair of trainers and 1 pair of black work shoes. I’ve never seen the fuss about shoes but I tell the husband that at some point, I will have a walk-in shoe cabinet filled with shoes to make up for all the shoes I’ve been missing out on and they will likely be called Manolos and Louboutins. Baby girl already has 8 pairs and counting. And she know exactly where they are kept so she’ll go try them out and parade around in them whenever she’s bored at home.