Officially a Walker

Hannah is now officially a walker. She now uses walking to get around as much or more than she does crawling! She still falls down quite a bit, but she always gets right back up and continues on her way. The past few days Hannah has been up to a lot of stuff. She seems to have had a learning explosion. She wants to know everything. We are back to walking around the house labeling things and labeling absolutely everything in books. We must read 100 books a day (no exaggeration!). Many of her books she has started to memorize and say some of the key phrases for each page or, in the case of her current favorite-Barnyard Dance, she does the motions for each page before I even read the words that tell her what move in the dance she's supposed to do! She's also really into listening to music and likes to sing along now to some of her favorites. She sings the ABC song, The Itsy Bitsy Spider, Head Shoulders Knees and Toes, The Wheels on the Bus, and I've Been Working on the Railroad. Since she loves the ABC song so much she's become very interested in saying the letters. She will now repeat every single letter of the alphabet back to me when I say them for her. On her own she can sing A-B-C, but that's as far as she gets. Then she loses interest, or just don't know what comes next. She likes for me to point to the letters and numbers on her mat and tell her what they are and then she repeats them back to me. She has several alphabet books and she's been a bit obsessed with them lately. Yesterday when I was feeding her I told her she could have 10 more goldfish and I counted them out of the container and put them on the table. Then I put 4 of them on her tray and said, "1,2, 3, 4 fish" Then I went to put some dishes in the dishwasher and I heard her say, "un, doo, dree ish" I looked over my shoulder in amazement and she was pointing to each fish with her finger as she counted! I ran over to her and I said, "Hannah, are you counting? Count with Mommy." I counted the remaining goldfish with her and then she repeated it right back to me pointing as she went! I was blown away. Of course I tried to get her to count other things the rest of the day, but she had no interest after that. It may have been a one time thing, but I still thought it was pretty amazing even if she was just parroting back what I had said. That's a lot of words to string together all at once for a 14 month old! Lately her pronunciation of words has become much clearer. Many of the words she's had for ages are now clear enough that there is no mistaking what she is saying, even by strangers. She's really picking up on words that give her a sense of control. She's had up for a long time, but now she says down, out (new favorite!), yes, more, swing, slide, window, door, flower, stroller, walk, phone, excuse me, your welcome, thank you, please, juice mommy, daddy, bowl, spoon, and I love you. She's also broadened her greeting to include hello and bye-bye in addition to her regular hi. She loves to talk on the phone and asks to call Kyle all the time. She even leaves him voice mails. She says "Hi Daddy, I love you, bye" It's very sweet.

She got some new blocks a few weeks ago and has just started to really get into them. Now she can build complicated towers with them. She puts a block on, looks at it and decides if she likes it there. If she doesn't she takes it off and moves it to a different peg and then puts a different block in it's place. Sometimes she will play with them independently for a half hour if she's really into it. Along with that hand eye coordination she's been working with her nesting cups a lot lately as well. She's quite good at stacking them all inside each other in the right order. There are also animals on each cup and she loves to tell me their names as she stacks. She just got really good at rocking on her bike the other day. She finally learned how to coordinate her rocking to the motion of the bike to get the fastest and best rock. She's says rock, rock, rock while she does it and sometimes says Whee! She also likes to push around this toy car she has and say vrrooom as she pushes it back and forth.
Now that she is a proficient climber she has learned that she can climb onto the chairs in the dining room and look out the window. This is one of her favorite pastimes when we won't let her go out to play. She just looks longingly out her "dindow" and narrates the scene she sees. She tells us about the neighbor's dog, the squirrels, the rocks in the flower bed, and people pushing babies in strollers down the street! She also likes to stand up there and wave good-bye to anyone that is leaving. She keeps on waving and saying bye bye until their car is out of sight.

She's started telling on the dogs a lot lately. If she hears one of the dogs eating something she say, "dog eat." If she hears them barking she yells Ella. If she sees one of them by the back door waiting to be let in she tells me which one it is over and over again until I go let them in!

Water is still a big hit at our house and it never fails to put Hannah in a good mood. All we have to say is the word bath and she's on it! She loves to take off her clothes and be naked which she calls neigh neigh! She even told me once when Evelyn was naked that she was naked! Here's a video of Hannah and Daddy singing If You are Happy and You Know It in the tub.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7969480415599878214&hl=en

Lately Hannah has been helping me do chores around the house. If she didn't "help" I wouldn't be able to get anything done. I think her absolute favorite chore is dusting. She holds onto the swiffer and shakes it back and forth across pictures on the wall and the tv. If something is too high for her to reach she loves it when I lift her up and put my hand over hers and make the duster shake back and forth really quickly. She giggles like crazy! She helps with the laundry by pushing the laundry baskets from the bedroom to the stairs to the basement and she also helps by loading and unloading the clothes from the basket (sometimes her loading and unloading is in direct opposition to what I'm trying to do with the clothes!). She also likes helping feed the dogs and cats and vacuum. She follows me around the house as I push the sweeper and she says "beep, beep, beep" as I get close to her and then crawls away quickly.

One final quick story before I post this. Last week (it's been another week since I started this post!) We had Hannah into the doctor's office because they thought she had a urinary tract infection. It ended up she was fine and we don't know what it was that was wrong but everything is ok now. Anyway, our doctor is absolutely wonderful. He's a Christian and he prays for us at every appointment. While he was praying this last appointment Hannah tried to say Amen for him 3 times during his prayer! When he was finished he joked that she was such a nice girl to help him out and wondered if that was her way of telling him to wrap it up because he was being too windy! It really made me smile. My next post I'll tell you all about our trip back to Pennsylvania this past weekend. In the meantime, enjoy all the new Hannah photos.