Big Girl Toys, Reading and Signing

Sarah's personality has really blossomed in the last two months. It started with her wanting to read the same books over and over during the trip to Gran and Pawpaw's (somewhat appropriately "Old McDonald had a Farm"), and has accelerated as she is now walking and signing more.

She always, always loves to sit with me in the rocking chair and read. I'm pretty sure that every time we've sat down to read, I've been the one to lose interest first (or felt my "to do" list calling). Honestly, I've challenged myself to sit with her and read for as long as she wants to, and 15 or 20 minutes later we are still going and I'm ready for a new activity!

 Sarah loves to play with balls. And, apparently, loves stickers too! Nathan was putting stickers on his hands and after he was done with the sticker sheet, Sarah picked it up and was trying to peel them off to put on her hands too. So I helped her put stickers on the back of both hands and she kept them on ALL DAY LONG!

This one brings back memories of Nathan's early love for the broom.

And I guess we are starting to play dress up already? Sarah loves for me to put this toy on her head and Daddy always laughs at her "skull cap"! And once again I'm amazed that she will keep it on her head and wants help putting it back on when it falls off.

I was reading some random blog posts about signing with babies about two weeks ago and it inspired me to try harder with signs for Sarah. So I did and within a few days Sarah learned "more", "read a book", "eat", and sometimes "milk". She's also gotten more consistent with "all done" and this week she added "swing" to her vocabulary as well. As far as verbalization, she is certainly babbling more and sometimes I hear things that really sound like words (like "hi" or "hello" or "me") but she doesn't use them consistently enough for me to tell for sure.