Discoveries of the Month: 13 month update

Eliza's been goin' full speed lately. She's hard to keep up with. Luckily she's very good at entertaining herself if given enough space to speed-crawl, roll, cruise, and her new specialty, "knee walking."

Knee walking is Eliza's new way to avert walking a couple more months, I think. It's like she's kneeling, only moving forward. It's really funny to watch and pretty inefficient. Except that she can carry things with her when she does it.

One of her other favorite things to do/say lately is, "Uh oh!" Especially if anything drops on the floor. She figured out that dropping doesn't always have to be an accident, though, and often drops messy splatters of her favorite dishes like spaghetti noodles or squooshy fruits to the floor, and then calls out, "uh oh!"
When we got home from picking Steve up yesterday I was carrying Eliza in along with the mail and the diaper bag. My hands were full so I decided to just drop the mail onto the floor and try to readjust my load.

Eliza sang out, "Uh-uh!" and I set her down next to where I had put the mail on the floor. I unloaded my diaper bag and sunk down onto the couch, catching my breath. Sweet Eliza, being the helper she is, said Uh-uh a few more times as she carefully managed to pick up all the mail I had dropped and knee-walk it across the living room floor in order to hand it to me. She dropped one envelope on the way and went back and got it too and retrieved it for me. I thought it was really cute. She's becoming quite the helper! Already cleaning up after her messy mommy!
She's really added to her verbal repertoire lately. Steve and I were at K-mart looking at some cheap lawn chairs. I found a kid one and was showing it to Steve, asking him if he thought we should get it. We thought Eliza would like it a lot but were trying to decide if it was worth the 10 bucks (probably not). Eliza must have realized that this was her time to shine, and she pointed at the pink, Disney princess clad chair and said, "Toy?"
And being the oh-so-easily-impressed first time parents that we are, we had to buy it for her. After all, she had earned it. Right....? That won't work too many other times, though.

She's really loved the chair, though. Despite a few tip overs.
She loves climbing into it all by herself. Once in it, she usually settles in to join the conversation or hug a stuffed animal or something. However, if Steve or I are standing up or walking by her, she instead stands up in the chair and reaches for us. Or she pushes it across the room and then climbs up it and then onto the couch that we're sitting on. Pretty ingenious!

Eliza also learned how to say swing. Her favorite part of playing at the park! She just purrs and squeals with delight during swing time. I don't know how long she would stay in it, if I didn't always get bored of it first.

Another one of Liza's favorite words is ball. I've been trying to teach her the word for ball for forever, and I read in one of my parenting books to emphasize the first consanants of words. So for ball, I've been saying to Eliza "bah-bah-bah-BALL." Apparently I went a little bit overboard because now Eliza calls balls, "bahbahl!" putting special emphasis on the first syllable- ah.

So I've successful taught my daughter how to stutter.

But I've also been noticing just how many little kid things start with the letter B. Is this because that's an easier consanant for them to master? Seriously, though. Ball, binky, bottle, baby, bib, bath, baa-baa (sheep), block, banana, boy, bark, barf, brouhaha...
I'm sure that's where all of those words originated from... a one year old's vocabulary. Especially since Eliza calls banana's, "nanas" and kind of growls her sheep's "baa's."

Eliza actually growls a lot of things. It's one of her favorite things to do... very lady-like. I blame my mom. Ever since Eliza heard mom's dogs playing and growling at eachother, Eliza has been growling. She loves looking through her little animal board books and pointing out the lions and tigers and bears, o my, and growling at/with them. It's really cute. She seriously will spend like a half hour with her "First Words" board books, just turning the pages and pointing and making animal sounds, etc., over and over and over again. It's neat to see, but makes me very grateful for library books that help add variety to my life.

Eliza really has gotten into the drawing. I bought some of those no-mess markers that only draw on the special paper and that has done wonders to eliminate her tattooing of her face, arms, belly, legs, my face, arms, legs, and the table, carpet, chairs, pets, you get the idea.

But another fun one has been sidewalk chalk! I love this outdoor activity! Gives me some great extra time in my garden too, although, Eliza, of course, likes it best if I just sit to do it with her.
I think Eliza really likes being able to do the action of drawing and seeing the immediate consequence of her action and effort. Which relates to her other obsession of pressing any button she can find.

She's learned how to turn the TV on and change the channel and the menu. She LOVES all remotes, phones, cameras. Computer keyboards and mouses are comparable to cat nip for kitties or cookies for cookie monster, and she loves when I let her stand in the front seat of the car on my lap and press all the radio and air buttons and play with the steering wheel and windshield wipers while we're waiting for Steve in the car.

Eliza still loves her music too. She especially likes the harmonica and kudzoo and her keyboard. She has figured out how to get her little barnyard toy to play the Old McDonald song, and so she kneels and pulls the switch over and over and over again and dances to the music. Unfortunately the other side of the sliding switch sets off the rooster's crow so we end up hearing Old Mcdonald interupted by a "cocka-doodle--Old McDonald had a--Cocka-do--Old McDo...." and so on.

The best toy I have found for Eliza, though, especially for church because it DOESN'T make any noise, is a kleenex box!! Nice, right? Recycled, emptied kleenex box. I stuff some of her favorite small toys into it, especially little animals and pacifiers and finger puppets, my beaded necklace, and then I show her that I'm putting one of her favorite toys into the box and give it a little shake and she goes for it! she gets busy searching through the box.

Often she gets distracted by the other toys that she pulls out and forgets about the last one I stuffed in until much later. It's been fantastic. Eliza really likes gathering things into containers- bags, buckets, baskets. She loves them all. My pediatrician says that girls are often "gatherers" and boys are "dispersers." I found that interesting.

Eliza's finger dexterity is improving too. She just started stacking blocks on top of each other instead of just employing destruction where e'er she goes, and she also has been able to fit bottle caps onto my water bottles. Impressive little fingers. Busy little fingers. Adorable little fingers.

Pointing, I think, is the most helpful finger gesture, even though the other signs that she's picked up on are extremely beneficial. Yesterday morning, I was holding her on my hip and opened up the fridge to pull out some breakfast for my hungry girl, and she pointed to where we keep her favorite food, and said, "eese!"So I gave her cheese and applesauce for breakfast. And cheerios.

Last of all, Eliza has discovered how to point to our eyes, nose, mouth, and ears on demand, but we're trying to get a video of it. We'll see what we can get. Most of the moments that would be most blog-tastic don't happen once the camera comes out.

And I'll conclude this month long post with a sample of Eliza's couch peek-a-boo and her hilarious, intoxicating laughter in this video.