This girl of ours, about two weeks shy of turning 18 months old, continues to amaze us. We estimate her vocabulary at well over 200 words, and she's starting to use possessive, i.e., "Mommy's keys," "Daddy's socks," and yes, even "Melia's shoes." We figure sentences aren't too far off, but it's not like we have experience with such things.Last week she pointed out the moon before it was dark out, which i thought was pretty cool given that all her picture books would have shown the moon at night. Her favorite word at the moment is "again" -- yes, she's started the long stage of wanting to have things repeated. Mostly it's reading a book to her several times in a row, which, given how many times we've read all her books already and how short many of her books are, can be pretty tedious. Speaking of reading, she constantly wants to be read to, handing us books aplenty whenever we're inside. Not that she always sits through the reading of them. She walks and runs and, well, never seems to stop for as long as she's awake. Typical I suppose, but for a first-time parent, so exciting to experience with her. She tends to run off in the direction opposite of where we want her to go. Fortunately, she's not yet that fast.
As for manners, she's getting good about saying please ("peas"), and when she forgets, she follows our prompting pretty well. It seems that she understands the word to mean "I want X," which at one level sounds about right for a toddler, but in another way I guess that really is how it's used. "Thank you" ("dan-q") is a little more erratic right now, but she does use it, particularly when prompted. She also has started saying "Bless you" when someone sneezes, something she obviously learned from her Nanny. Kathy sneezes a bunch, and years ago I started saying "Gesundheit," "Labriot," and "Salute" in addition to "Bless you," and Emelia shows no inclination to adding those other sneeze responses.
Last weekend we bought her a doll at a neighborhood yardsale-- she's been grabbing other children's dolls at the park (and being unwilling to give them back), so we figured we should. Despite the stereotype of a girl having a doll, we didn't push this in the slightest. We got it because it was obvious that Emelia wanted one. Emelia named her doll Ogga -- Kathy and I disagree on how it should be spelled, but since I'm the one with the blog, I'm putting it in writing first. ;) Ogga has some purple marker on the side of her face (though after Kathy's ministrations, it's not as severe as when we bought it), but as one might expect, this isn't a problem to Emelia -- she absolutely adores Ogga.Emelia is fascinated with water, and constantly asks us for some just so she can play with it. We have a metal sugar bowl with two handles that she asks us to put water in -- sometimes she drinks during the course of playing with it, and sometimes it ends in a mess. But even then, it's only water. She also really enjoys drawing, whether on her magnetic board or with markers on a white board at her little table.
Of course, despite our best efforts, she's not always fun. She often will cry as soon as she doesn't get her way. The crying has an instantaneous "off" switch too, so that she'll stop
all at once if something else gets her attention (or if we're foolish enough to give into a demand/request that we had already said no to). In fact, she's much more likely to cry over not getting her way than she is when she falls -- she's a tough little cookie. She continues to test us, intentionally or otherwise -- she's been taking off her clothes, and her diaper, when she's in her crib. She hasn't done it in about a week, so we hope she's past this stage (we haven't entirely relied on her to be done with it-- Kathy bought onesies that we put Emelia in when she goes to bed, and so far she's hasn't taken one of those off (but we're sure that's only temporary)). Still, on the balance there are a lot more laughs and smiles than there are groans and instances of "Here, you take her!"She certainly has enriched our lives.
