Big Changes

It sounds like an exaggeration, but there really is something new every day. The latest on Laine:

• She was never much of a climber, but she can now get up on most chairs...and our coffee table. Just this morning she got up on our kitchen chairs unassisted. Then stood up. Yikes.


• Major vocabulary in the past two weeks: hat (a-ha); fork, sky, booty (Pirate booty); nap, earring (ear); macaroni (roni); stamp (on the foot at Little Gym); loud (in reference to airplanes first, then she demonstrated she really knew what it meant: our garbage cans rolling down the driveway, bus driving by); round and round (wheels go round and round, so does steering wheel, etc.)


• Laine had her first sentence: "Shoe off!" Now she is bossing us around all the time: "Daddy bike down!" (From it's spot hanging on the ceiling.)


• Singing has entered a whole new level: she is not just "singing" songs on her own--she is singing with real music, and is in tune! First it was with Wheels on the Bus, where she not only sang "round and round" but also "beep beep" and "shh shh shh," as the mommies say. The latest is with Down By the Station. She sings the parts I've made bold. "Down by the station, early in the morning, see the little pufferbillys all in a row. See the engine driver pull the little handle--chug chug toot toot off we go! It melted my heart the first time I heard her little voice singing "mowning," and "ah-rooow."


• Laine can jump. And I mean actually jump, not just bend her knees like toddlers do. She catches air.


• Laine is going up and down the step into the living room standing up, not holding on to anything. Occasionally she doesn't make it but her balance is great!


• It's not just "yeah" anymore. Everything is "yeahyeah!"


• Laine is addicted to her baby dolls and puppies. We tuck them in at night, feed them snacks, milk and water (they usually get the first sip) and Laine talks to them all the time. She gets right up in their faces and chatters at them. She can be downstairs and realize her doll is in her room, and calls out to it as if it will answer, "Baaaabeeee? Baaabeee!" She wants to teach them everything. "Shoe!" she says, putting their face right into it. She reads them books, hands them the phone to talk to daddy, and asks them how their nap was when she gets up. "Nap?"


• When Laine babbles, most of her phrases end in "dawa." I don't know what it means but these days it's as good as a period at the end of a sentence!

Caught after climbing up on our bed, half dressed before a bath!