Miracle of Life

I am always so amazed at how fast babies grow and learn. The summer-feeling has brought back memories of LAST summer, when I was healing from giving birth and caring for a little creature who liked to be swaddled. Now she's 2 feet tall, walking all over the place and talking up a storm.

She is a MAGNET and SPONGE all at the same time. You show her something once and she can do it. And, things you don't even mean to teach her directly, she does. Here are a few of the things she is doing lately that completely entertain us:

• Ellie Mae (the dog) is not allowed to be in the kitchen. If she starts to come in, we point at the family room and say "out". Well, little missy Star looks at Ellie, points to the side of Ellie and says "Ow", short and staccato just like we say "out".
• She can show you were her toes, fingers, hair, head, eyes, mouth, and ears are. She still won't point at her nose for some reason.
• The other day, my mom picked her up, and Starlynn patted her and said "uhguhmuh". I think "guhmuh" is pretty close to "grandma".
• When you ask her what a cow says, or when she sees a picture of a cow, she says "bow"
• You know when babies sometimes pat your face or pull your hair a little over enthusiastically? Garrett doesn't like when she does that to me, so he always grabs her hand and makes her stroke my face gently and says "be nice to mommy." And we tell her "nice" for animals and show her how to pet them nice. One day, she poked me or something and I said "OW!" really loud, and she instantly started stroking my face and said "ice". Of course I laughed a lot. Now she does it all the time (strokes my face and says "ice".)
• She waves at EVERYBODY. In the store, at church, to all of us. And said "I" or "hi". Today, she sat by the chapel door to the church and waved at several people as they came in, like it was her calling.
  
• Last night, she was playing with one of the couch pillows. I kept telling her, "hurry! lay down quick!" She'd lay down, giggling, then I'd cover her with the pillow and she would squeal with laughter and throw the pillow of of her. We had to have repeated that like 20 times, and my jaws hurt so bad because I was laughing so much.

Well, that is all I can think of for now. I know there is more, and I am going to try and do better at writing things on here when they happen so I can keep a better "journal" of her. I have some cute pics of her eating watermelon, playing at the river, and playing at the Pacific Science Center, but I need to download them.

Toodles!