I have been spending a lot of time just watching Isabel this week. She has periods of time now more and more where she is content to just play, and I can be working in the kitchen or working on my computer and just watch her from afar! She is happiest if she doesn't really know I am watching her.
I am noticing her growing into more of a little girl, at what seems like lightning speed at times. Every time she starts doing something new, I think to myself how her babyhood is disappearing before our eyes. It is a very bittersweet feeling and I often wish I could just freeze time, or at least guarantee myself that I will be able to remember all her little mannerisms that she had at each stage, perfectly, when she is older. But I know I won't be able to, so I am trying to record as much as I can in journaling, photos, and home videos.
A couple examples of what I have observed this week that shows me she is growing and learning so fast!
1) This past week, she "weaned" me from the last daily nursing we were still doing (bedtime). During our bedtime routine, she would be in her jammies, we would read our bedtime story like we always do, I would lay her down on the Boppy, and she would just "play" instead of nurse. When I would try to encourage her to nurse a little, she would just smile and "talk" to me. "Bababa, mamama, BA! BA!" I would let her do this for a few minutes, then say Night-Night and lay her down, and she went down just as easily as she normally did. This continued for a few nights, and even one time when she was up in the middle of the night because her teeth were hurting her, she did not want to be nursed, she just wanted to be held. That confirmed for me that she was done with nursing. It is a sad time for a mother who has been nursing her child for a year, to suddenly not have that bond anymore, but I know that our time before bedtime is still special, it just doesn't have that element.
2) Toys. This week, for the first time, I have started seeing her put toys inside one another. This is a developmental skill that I have read about in parenting magazines and books, and she has now mastered it. She puts balls insides cups and shakes them to see what noise she makes, and she crawls around and "gathers" all of her plastic balls that she loves, and puts them in the clear plastic storage compartment on the side of her walker toy, where Mommy always puts them when I pick up all her toys every night. She also has started setting Little People toys on the shelf of her changing table, imitating when she has seen me do the same thing. She thinks that is where they go, so she puts them there when I am getting her dressed or undressed. It is pretty cute!
3) Pointing at things she wants, and baby signs. She definitely points to what she wants now (all four fingers together, not just one finger pointing). When she is eating dinner, when she wants a drink, she will point to her cup and say something. Sometimes it is "Buh" but more and more now, it is "Muh," which I think is her trying to say "Milk." She also very clearly signs when she is all done eating (her "all done" sign is putting both hands up and opening and closing her hands quickly). Sometimes it is pretty funny, because she will sign "All done" and then clap, and then "All done" and then clap! She also thinks she is hysterical when she shakes her head from side to side (like "No"). She does it when she is getting full at mealtime, but not quite all done, and she knows that Luke and I just laugh when she does it, so she always looks to us for our reaction, and keeps doing it because she knows she is amusing us!
Babies (quickly becoming toddlers) are so amazing and adorable!
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