Jill's Daily Note: 14 Months

Biggest item of note: I think this is the month I will remember as the month you started talking.

Words: Most importantly, just this last week or so you've started calling me Mama and Dad, Dada. It's SO SWEET. We were downstairs the other day and you heard Dad's footsteps on the wood floor upstairs, coming towards the stairs. You pointed at the stairs and exclaimed, "Dada!!". Since then you have basically become obsessed with Dad and trying to find him in his office any time we are home.

You say "ni ni" now when we go upstairs to do our bedtime routine, "pump" for pumpkin, "buba" for bubbles, and "buh bye" is in frequent use. The other day when we were in the grocery store parking lot, you said, "buh bye woof" and waved a shy wave. I looked around and saw that a dog had just walked by - you were saying goodbye to him! This was the first time you had put two "words" together like that. Ball is also a very popular word around here - at a party last week you took me into the bathroom at least 20 times to show me the "balls" on the shower curtain (it was polka dotted and you pointed at every single polka dot and said "ball").

You like to identify cats at every opportunity - even the half inch sized tiger on the side of the diaper box - by exclaiming "Cack!", and when in public you point at every single person wearing a hat and proudly say "hat" while slapping your head.

In more ambitious news, you just tried saying window yesterday for the first time. You like to point at the window and say "wiwo" and have been repeating it all morning. I'm not entirely sure how the window became such a source of fascination, but it certainly has this week. In particular, you LOVE to pull the curtain aside on our front door to see if the cat is sitting on the front porch.

It has become virtually impossible to get a good photo of you this month; you just move way too much and have no interest in looking at the camera, let alone smiling for it.

The only non-blurry shots we have of this month are of you reading or sleeping.

In feeding news: You now say buh bye to your food when you're all done and want me to take your food away. You also say "dow" for down when in your highchair (frequently while pointing down) and you consider your meal time over. This just started recently and is so helpful- we've cut back quite a bit on food dropage because I'm able to get you down quickly before the food throwing starts.

When you hear the word "hot" in conversation or grab a piece of food that feels hot to the touch, you blow as if to cool something down, but not anywhere in the direction of the hot food, which cracks me up. You've stopped signing for "more" as often as you used to (preferring to point dramatically at what you want and acting like you might die if you don't get more of it), but have started regularly signing for food when hungry. All this communication is tremendously helpful for me as I no longer try to feed you snacks all day long - I'm mostly able to just wait until you tell me you're hungry.

Skills: Just three days ago, you blew a kiss for the first time when we were Skyping with Katherine in LA. We've been trying to teach you to blow a kiss for a little while, but when Katherine blew you one on the computer screen, you just upped and did it back.

You know where many body parts are and correctly point to them, with the exception of eyes, which you are convinced are on the side of your head. Your favorite parts to identify are your head, nose, hands and tongue. When teeth are mentioned, you always use your finger to motion as if brushing your teeth. You now pretend brush your teeth when I open to the page in your book, "The Bedtime Book" that depicts animals brushing their teeth. Before I even read the words about brushing teeth, you're manically brushing yours with your finger.

Which reminds me that this month seems to be the month where you made a lot of connections between books and real life. When we see the moon in Goodnight Moon you always point out your bedroom window to where we can see the real moon. When Dad pointed out his real life clock after you kept showing him the clock in your book, I think your mind was totally blown.

The other day you pointed at the tiny toy giraffe that sits on the bookshelf in the Goodnight Moon book and then pointed at your Sophie giraffe toy. When we were reading upstairs the other day, you pointed at an apple in a book and then pointed to the stairwell. I didn't know what you meant, so I carried you downstairs asking, "Apple?" and when I set you down, you went running and pointed at the apple core I'd set on the bookshelf that morning after snacking on it. You'd pointed at the apple while I was eating it a few times that morning and I told you what it was - it's amazing how much you're absorbing!

You've become pretty obsessed with "doing work" on Dad's weird, vintage gears and gauges in his office. You never miss an opportunity to dart into his office and meddle with his vintage oscillator. Which basically means I lost a bet 10 years in the making because when your Dad brought all those gears home to our tiny apartment I was annoyed and told him we had no need for them. He responded by saying he thought our kids would one day find them really fun to play with.