Hannah and Dice

Right now, you are our little imitator.  You have so many words that it will be impossible for me to list them.  Most things that we try to get you to say, you will say.  You always get the inflection, though obviously you can't pronounce every word just yet, but you're trying.  You are much more verbal than your brother was at this age.

You love to unpack the wipes whenever I am changing your diaper, but will always grab a spare (or two) and use it to wipe off your hands, and then go wipe off the table, some nearby furniture, or your toys.  Sometimes you will even wipe off your mouth.  

A few weeks ago I let you play with this little glass and a dozen or so dice.  I put your pacifier in and stayed right with you the whole time, but I was surprised that you played with this for almost 45 minutes non-stop.  You would put the dice into the bag, or the lego, or the cup.  I don't know if you were so enamored because you don't typically play with something so tiny, or because of the little tinging sound the dice made together in the cup, but observing your concentration was precious.  

You have started to imitate little things that we do.  You were playing with Chelsea's compact the other day, took a brush and started "dipping" it into the mirror like it was makeup, and then brushing the brush against your cheeks.  You also pick pick up your babies and snuggle them between your shoulder and chin, hugging them, swinging them back and forth, and sometimes patting them on the back.  You also pretend to write on paper with any writing utensil you get your hands on, and "answer" anything that looks like a phone.

You LOVE patty cake, particularly the "roll it" part.  You roll and roll and roll, as soon as I start clapping at the beginning of the song, with a huge smile on your face.  We did this many many times on the plane as it was one of the few things that made you happy.

Whenever you hand us things you say, "thank you!"  Today we unpacked a bunch of little toys from a box, and you would take each one out, hand it to me and say "thank you" for each one.  There were maybe 15 toys, but I just kept sneaking them into the box so that you would keep doing it over and over.  It was so sweet.

You are a little dancer.  You will dance if someone is tapping a beat on the table or even if I just am humming a song.  The baby bounce has gotten a few new moves added to the mix, including the shoulder shake, the upper body sway, the head shake, and some foot tapping.  Clapping is always a possibility as well.

You give kisses and hugs.  You started blowing kisses recently too, though kiss blowing can quickly turn into the "Indian call" sort of thing.

You took your first steps towards your brother who was playing on the sit n spin.  You took 6 steps, then 5 more later that day.  Then you did sort of a pivot, where you would take a step, and then just spin on that foot.  But now you are pretty much completely back to crawling.  You've spent a lot of the last week in the stroller as we go here and there to get things done, and there is so much new ground to explore in our new flat and in the parks that you just don't seem to care much about mastering walking.  Not that you've ever been interested in walking.

You still aren't sleeping at night.  You've had to cry it out in each new place: both grandparents houses and now here.  Just sleep already for crying out loud.  We love you anyway, but let's work on that sleeping thing.

15 months already?  Time does fly when you're having fun.