On the 29th of June Nora Lee will be a year and a half old. She has certainly moved from being a baby to a little girl. Her personality and likes and dislikes develop more each day and it's such a fun ride!
She continues to show signs of being a dancer. She has a handful of pretty impressive moves if I do say so myself. She likes to dance fast to fast music and sloooow to slow music. It's incredible to watch her shift her movements with the change of music. She has actually done a demi-plie which we find magical. We have shown her salsa, contemporary, waltz, and other dances on TV but she is most excited about watching the contemporary dances or waltzes - the slower dances. We are excited to explore classes with her when the time is right.
As I mentioned in previous posts Nora Lee has been great about using sign language to express her needs. She signs "food", "nursing", "change me", "sleep", and "more". Just this week she started saying "more" and I was pretty excited. Until now she says "dada" and "bye-bye". Bye-bye she consistently knows what it means but dada means "dad" and has meant many other things in the past. Mama still is very very rare. She knows who it is and will bring me something if Matt says "bring this to mama" but she doesn't really say it.
In this last month we have been more social with other kids and families. Its been sweet to see her with other kids and their parents. Im delighted at how gentle and affectionate she is with them. Lots of unsolicited hugs and kisses. She is quite tender with babies - stroking their heads and kissing them.
Nora Lee loves the outdoors just like her mom! We do a lot of gardening and play time in the yard with water and dirt. She also loves animals and looks at these national geographic books from the seventies again and again and again and again. I do all the animal sounds for her and she repeats them but I get stuck when we come to platypus and pronghorns. I just go silent and turn the page.
She is showing signs of enjoying "dress-up". She asks to put on my hats and scarves and shoes. Yesterday she even managed to get a high heel on and tramp around the house.
Last month we noticed she was giving us the "change me" sign and was dry and then would poop a few minutes later. Since she was aware her poo was coming we got her a tiny toilet to see if she was wanting to toilet train. So far she loves spending time on it but hasn't actually used it yet.
She's very interested in what goes on in the kitchen and will scoot anything nearby to stand on to see onto the counter. We have to be careful that she doesn't choose things with wheels to stand on.
Those are the updates for now!! We are having a blast :)
Sara Jean
