Growing and Exploring

Our little Lucy is growing up so quickly before our eyes!  Almost 17 months already!  Here are a few of her latest (and cutest!) toddler skills and antics:

She says one and two-word phrases, and is generally quite chatty, especially while at home.  One of her recent favorite phrases is "upanddown", which she says when she wants to be picked up.  This is because she always wants to get down very shortly after being picked up, so Ryan and I often jokingly say "up and down, up and down" when we pick her up.  Of course now she is confused...poor kid.  (She also calls my makeup bag, which I let her play with, "makeupon" because I always tell her "Mama's going to put her makeup on".)

She loves music and dancing, and constantly sings and babbles to songs like "Twinkle Twinkle", "Baa Baa Black Sheep", "ABC's" and "Wheels on the Bus".  When I sing a song she really loves, such as songs from library Storytime, she immediately responds with "again!" and keeps saying it until I sing the song again ("GEN! GEN! GEN!")  As you can imagine, for Mama and Dada this gets old pretty quickly.  She is one persistent child.

Her latest fascinations include Elmo, balls, cars, airplanes, and anything that goes "beep", and the moon. She wants to go outside and see "Moon" every night, and is disappointed if it's hidden by clouds or not visible.  Oh and by the way, we are borrowing a fabulous Elmo costume (thank you Everett!!!) for Halloween this year... shhhhh...don't tell Lucy yet.

Yesterday, after I picked her up from Karen's, it was raining outside and still pretty warm... instead of just rushing inside to feed her dinner, I decided to let her play in the driveway in the rain for awhile -- she LOVED it.  We sang "It's raining, it's pouring, the old man is snoring..." and caught raindrops on our hands and arms.  "Rain-ee, rain-ee" she sang, dancing and holding out her arms.  After dinner, she got down and said "rain-ee!" but I told her it was too dark and almost bedtime.  This morning I was recounting our adventures to Ryan, and of course Lucy overheard - "rain-ee!" she shouted and went to the door.  Sorry to disappoint again, kiddo.  If only we could conjure up these elements of nature - the moon and the rain - whenever we wanted to play with them.

A couple days ago, she was playing with her stuffed puppy Violet.  She layed Violet on the carpet, and for whatever reason thought it would be fun to "cover" her up with kleenexes, taken one at a time from the box in her room.  She went back and forth about 8 times (8 kleenexes on top of Violet) before Mama decided we'd better save the rest for more *ahem* practical applications. That boring old Mama...

One thing's for certain - this little toddler of ours never stops moving, exploring, learning, growing, or making us laugh and smile. We are so thankful for all these little moments and adorable new skills.