She is talking so much! Her first word was "hi" at 11 months, followed quickly by "baby." Now she also says ball, Momo (Elmo), bye, hello (when the phone rings!), mama, Nana, Papa, Baba (how she tries to say Gramma and Grampa), cart, no, gee (geese), got (goat), kack kack (quack quack), and others. She is constantly babbling, sometimes saying things with such emphasis that I feel an urgency around trying to figure out what it is! She'll have her eyebrows lifted so high as she enunciates gibberish.
She is so active and wants to run everywhere. She took her first steps just after a year, by 13.5 months was doing the zombie walk, and by 14 just taking off. She's incredibly social, waving and saying "hi" to adults and children alike, even past the age where babies generally start to get a little more reserved. However, she only wants to be held by people she knows well.
She looooves reading. I waited so long for this! Peers would talk about their babies loving books and she just didn't. We could maybe get through a couple pages, but they didn't hold her attention. (Same for TV shows - I would hear about someone else's 6-month-old's favorite show, and I could barely distract Ellis with something long enough to trim her nails.) Then suddenly, just around her first birthday, she got so into them. She was able to focus for longer and just became interested. She brings us the same ones to read over and over, and it can be hard to introduce a new one now. She'll smack it aside and hand you a familiar one. I used to wonder if I had done something wrong. Maybe I didn't read to her enough early on and she just wasn't going to be into books. But she just had to grow into them, and that was at a different rate than other babies.
Ellis has gotten so smart. According to Wonder Weeks, one of her recent developmental leaps ended with her having the ability to think more into the future. So she could plan and manipulate. I don't mean that with a negative connotation, but rather that she can figure out how to get her needs met. Does Mom respond more favorably if I whine and nag, or if I act sweet and affectionate? What will a smile get me?
The first time I noticed it was when I was trying to transition her to the crib for naps again in preparation for day care. She would sign "more," which she does mostly when she wants food, and I took her downstairs for a snack. Putting her down hungry just seemed like it would sabotage my efforts. She ate almost all of her snack, but then signed it again when I put her back in the crib. That's when I knew she was trying to think of how to communicate to me to get me to take her out! "Hmmm, if I ask for food, she has to take me out of the crib to feed me." Smart little cookie. But I know she understands enough for me to tell her why I can't meet her demand. So I would say, "No, baby, it's all done. Sleepy time now." ("All done" and "sleepy time" are very familiar phrases.) And she would let out a loud cry, because she knew what I was telling her and did NOT like it! Being able to interact like this is incredible. For her to think that much into something and for us to figure out how to communicate that to each other. It's amazing to witness.
She's also been trying to figure out how things work around her. Stacking things, putting things together, playing with buckles and Velcro. She wants to push ALL the buttons around her, and gets absolutely ecstatic at the sight of an escalator. She says "Whoaaaaaa!" and "Wowwwwww!" very dramatically when something piques her interest. It's always in context and tends to make people around her crack up.
She's such a spitfire, wild and adventurous. But she's also clingy and affectionate. It's a high needs combination that fills my heart just as much as it drains my energy. I love this sweet girl more than life itself. There has never been anyone like her ever in the world.
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