15 months!

Nora turned 15 months this past week. The months just seem to go by faster and faster and our little one is changing by the minute. Some new things we've discovered about our girl:

* She's an extrovert (WHAT?! How do 2 introverts make an extrovert? We're still trying to figure this one out, but may leave it to the geneticists). She still hasn't entered that "stranger anxiety" phase. When we go places like the grocery store, Nora can't help herself but try to catch every stranger's eye, give them a smile and start going through her animal noise and sign language repertoire. When they're not easily baited by her chocolate-brown puppy-dog eyes, she starts yelling "HEY PEOPLE LOOK AT ME!" (or more like "YAAABABA MMMM PIKUPIKU).

* She loves to dance. If she even hears a hint of music somewhere, she'll start swinging her hips - that little tushy is going, back-and-forth, back-and-forth. We may have a future salsa or hula dancer on our hands! She even gets her head going a little like this SNL skit. I'll post a video as soon as I can catch her at it!

* She loves to share. She's constantly giving me things: toys, lint, kleenex she's just ripped to smithereens, and occasionally, she'll kindly hand me a mouth full of partially-chewed food, just in case I didn't want to go to the trouble of doing it myself. Hopefully we can continue to encourage the sharing of toys, but not so much the partially-digested food.

* She's caught on to a lot more than she wants us to know. We've been working with her for months on animal noises and more recently some animal signs. She's caught on to a couple, but usually just goes back to her favorites - the lion's growl or the lizard lips (remember this post). We had given up and just figured we should give it time. Well, I was watching Nora's little friend Adelaide a few weeks back and I was holding Adelaide in my lap looking through a book of animals. Nora was playing a few feet away with her back to us. I started asking Adelaide what noises the animals made and from the corner of my eye, I saw Nora signing many of them and making animal noises we had never heard before! That little stinker was holding out on us. So, for now, these are the signs she's done consistently: bird, fish, dog; and noises: lion, lizard, fish (ok, not so much a sound as the fishy mouth), occasionally the monkey and for a dog she acts like she's trying to whistle (not sure where that came from).

* Our laid-back girl is on the cusp of walking. I tell you, our little one is never in a hurry. She's always taken her time at reaching what we mommies are told are those all-important milestones., I take it as God's way of teaching me patience and trust in Him, because I could easily get consumed with worry and "what-if's". I really think she just hasn't *wanted* to walk enough yet to really do it. Here she is taking a few steps ...

(her new favorite toy is the bottle brush, I know, I know, probably not the safest thing to be walking with)

* Unfortunately, we've also entered a whining phase. Nora is still not super verbal (at least not words mommy and daddy can understand) which I think frustrates her as she's becoming opinionated about things.

As she's becoming more and more willful, we're also getting more and more of a whimpering-whine from our girl. I'm torn between trying to teach her more signs or just encouraging her to speak her words. I know I've heard from different places that kids who sign are slower to talk - but she needs to be learning some form of communication for the sake of our sanity! *Any helpful advice is much appreciated on this!*

Despite the occasional whine, Nora is still smiles and laughter, snuggles and kisses, chubby toes, a fuzzy head and an overwhelming joy!