New Things

I don’t care if this makes me one of “those” parents but … I love and am completely and utterly amazed by watching my kiddo learn new things. It seems the past month has been full of discovery and realizations. She is learning how to express herself and how to communicate. Here she is becoming this little person with her own thoughts, attitudes and ideas right under my nose. And? It is fun.

She’s learned to clap, as you may have seen in the video the other day. She claps when she’s excited, when she’s saying hi, when she’s saying bye, when she’s happy, when she’s sad … basically, whenever she feels like it.

I gave her cheese for the first time the other day and she clapped and squealed, like it was the best thing ever. Which, well, it is.

She’s starting to understand my words.When I say, “Where’s your puppy? Where’s Nika?” she stops what she’s doing, looks around, and if she doesn’t see her, starts slapping her leg (the sign for puppy). If she does see her, she motors on over and starts poking her.

We skype with my mom almost every morning over breakfast. When she hears the skype ring, she starts clapping and squealing. And then lately, shuts up and is absolutely quiet the entire time we’re chatting. If we aren’t skyping, she will sometimes look over at the laptop and holler at me. Like, “Hey Mom, where’s Nana?”

If we’re outside when Evan pulls in the driveway at the end of the day, she starts kicking her feet and squealing with excitement. She loves her “Dadadada”.

Speaking of “Dadadada”, when I prompt her to say Mama, she grins up at me and says “Da Da”. When I prompt her to say Dada, she grins up at me and says “Ee Ka” (Nika). When I tell her to say Nika, she grins up at me and says “Ga” or “Ba”.

When she’s ticked, she blows raspberries with her mouth until she’s at the point of sending bubbles of spit flying all over the place. It’s so hard not to laugh.

When she’s hungry, or sees us eating, she starts smacking her lips together and saying “MMM MMM MMM”. And yesterday, for the first time, she signed food.

She’s pulling up on everything and is getting pretty steady on her legs. She’s starting to cruise and has this insanely cute, somewhat guilty, totally cocky smile that she beams up at me when she figures out how to get herself standing up somewhere she shouldn’t be – like on my shelf in the kitchen, ready to pull down all my cookbooks.

No matter what area you put her in, she immediately searches out the most dangerous, most inappropriate thing to do – and does it. Take for example:

Everyone always says, “Just you wait …”, “Your life’s about to get crazy”, and all that jazz when talking about babies becoming mobile. But honestly? I’m loving it. Sure, she keeps me on my toes. But hasn’t she always? The only difference now she’s on her own toes, too.

Mobility has brought with it a newfound freedom, independence and confidence and has helped rid us of the frustrations she experienced when she wanted to get here and there but couldn’t do it on her own. Maybe some of my opinions will change when she’s up and walking on her own, but I’m not sure. At this point, she already figures out how to get anywhere she wants to be (and pretty quickly with the super crawl), so will it be much different if she’s on her hands and knees or on her feet? We’ll see.

I’m not sure how much longer we have until I’m chasing a little walker all around but for now? I’m just loving her up and enjoying each and every fun discovery she makes.