A Long L Update

Our little L never ceases to entertain us. As of yesterday, L has decided that she wants a turn at "reading" her books to us. She gets a book, brings it to one of us, sits in our lap, and then opens it, and in a very loud voice she "reads"as she points to pictures and words. If we try to turn the page or read to her she starts waving her arms and making frustrated noises. If we keep at it she takes her book and moves elsewhere, so we now sit quietly and listen. She still loves being read to but it has to be at our normal story times. Books have sort of become Linnea's obsession-she happily says "boo, boo, boo-K" over and over again as she roams our house gathering books. The funny thing is she doesn't care if they are pictures books. She will take one of our "boos" and sit down and flip through the pages too. However, picture books are the best and she keeps a couple stashed in her tepee that Mirmar got her for Christmas.

L LOVES dogs. If she sees a dog on a walk she begins pointing happily saying "dog, dog, dog". Our friend Amanda got her a little dog purse that she pets as she says "dog". One of her more recent books is the "Poky Little Puppy" and she points to the puppies and, you guessed it, says "dog, dog". We don't own a dog, and are hoping to get at least 3 more years before Linnea starts requesting for a dog of her own.

Linnea wants to know the name for everything, and constantly is pointing and saying "dis, dis, dis" (i.e. L language for this). She tries really hard to repeat back to us what we say, and sometimes gets it. Today, she was "reading" Joe "Goodnight Moon" (no it wasn't Daddy's bedtime) pointed to the bears on the "and three little bears sitting in chairs" page and said "dis". Joe said, "bear", L said "bur" right back, and then surprised us both and pointed to one of her teddy bears and said, "bur".

In the last month Linnea has started signing a lot more. She currently signs eat, milk, more, drink, and kitty (kitty isn't her best). She still prefers attempting to say the word instead of sign but is finding that for our comprehension on important words (i.e. words related to food) signing often works best.

For Christmas Linnea got a set of Mega Blocks-which are actually oversized Legos. She figured out how to build two together, but will pull them right back apart. She then always congratulates her self with clapping and saying "yeahhhh". Joe builds her various castles and towers and she gleefuly takes them apart one piece at a time.

Linnea isn't walking quite yet but has taken a couple of steps on her own. She likes to lightly hold on to one of our fingers and walk us around. On Saturday we took Linnea to a very crowed OMSI (She got a year pass from her Remenak Grands-OMSI is a hands on science musem with an awesome toddler play room). We played in the Toddler Room for a bit, but it was so crowed that we decieded to move downstairs to the Turbine Room. Linnea held on to Joe's finger and walked nearly the whole way. However, she did stop frequently to wave and say hi to pretty much every person who walked by. This kid is a social butterfly!