Leaps and Bounds

It's amazing how quickly babies learn. We know that they can understand much more of what they hear than what they can speak. We also know that their motor, cognitive, and language skills develop by leaps and bounds at this time. It is so amazing for me to see how all of this is coming together for Andrina now. She has been walking exclusively for a week now and has run a little bit (gross motor skills development), is stacking blocks and putting together puzzles (fine motor skills development), has spoken at least 8 words (that I can understand-expressive language development), understands so many more words, probably a hundred (receptive language development), and not to mention all of her smiles, gestures, and being able to engage us and respond to us to get her needs met (social and emotional development).

I think what I'm trying to get across is that it is now that it is really becoming apparent that my baby is so well on her way to becoming a person. And by a "person" I mean her own abilities, her own intellect, her own accomplishments, her own relationships with others, and her own personality. It seems that everyday she is capable of something new. Here are pictures from two examples:

Andrina with her "mommy" and "baby" tigers. This morning I was holding and playing with the mommy tiger and I said to Andrina that the mommy wanted her baby, and I asked her, "where's the baby tiger"? She stood up looked around the room, walked over to the baby, picked it up and brought it to me! Then she wanted to play with both of them, so here's a picture of her with the mommy and baby tigers.

Andrina was better at stacking her blocks this morning, so she was able to stack her blocks 4 high (instead of 3 like yesterday) and they stayed standing without falling over.

Every day I get on the floor with Andrina and physically play with her. One of her favorites is when I lay on my back, pull my knees to my chest, and put Andrina on my shins, lifting her up and down and we laugh and converse while doing this. Her laughing makes it obvious that it is something that she enjoys. Well, this evening we were playing like this and when I stopped, Andrina wanted more so she climbed right back on top of me while laughing. Yes, this is something that all kids do, letting others know what they want. But it was sweet for me because this is also something that I enjoy (we get to be physically close while playing like this and our shared enjoyment of it brings more emotional closeness between us) and Andrina wanting more of it means I get to be closer to her. And this was the first time she let me know that she wanted more of this playing. Just a sweet memory for mommy.