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Communicating With the Wee One

Maggie’s ability to communicate with us has become more and more apparent with each passing day and most recently she has picked up on a few snippets of sign language that we’ve used. The first time she signed ‘more’ to me I almost fell off of my chair.  Now, she is signing with emotion mixed in and we’re pretty amazed. We hadn’t planned on using sign language with her, but now that she seems to be catching on I almost want to jog down to the corner store and pick up an ASL manual. I won’t, of course.

One of her favorite games to play with lately is Night-Night. Basically, she’ll put her head down for a moment, act like she’s sleeping and pop up with a huge smile on her face, expecting us to greet her with a hearty, “Good Morning!!”. Which we do, of course. This gets repeated over and over with her big smile growing with each round. Without fail, we end the game laughing because Maggie is such a cheese-ball and her being able to ham-it-up is pretty hilarious.

Just last night I was rubbing her back as she fell asleep in her bed, and I leaned down to kiss her cheek (because it was just SO kissable!) and right after I did it, her eyes popped open! For a split second I regretted kissing her kissable cheek, but then Maggie flashed one of her full-faced grins, happy to be kissed apparently, and dozed off for the final time. I almost had to bite my tongue from letting out a horrible cackle-laugh, which would have for sure woken the sleeping babe. She is so full of happiness, which in turn makes our whole entire family happy.

Aside from the Night Night game and new words showing up with high frequency, Maggie has also discovered the power behind her words, trying on many words for size, favoring words that get results. Just this morning she convinced Barry that she needed MORE cookie….a daughter after her daddy’s heart. He gave it to her, of course.

We had somebody comment to us once about waiting until Maggie is 18 months old, when her personality would ‘really’ show up.  Barry put it perfectly when he said that he was a little bit scared of what life will be like at 18 months – because The Littlest Morsel is definitely not lacking in the personality department these days.

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A-Town Girls Unite!

It has become glaringly obvious that I have become a lack-luster blogger since I’ve arrived back home from our North Dakota trip. I’ve got a backlog of images to prove it and pretty bundle of abandoned posts as well. I guess I could say I’m too busy enjoying the present to reflect on the past. Which is all fine and dandy, but I typically enjoy a few pensive moments as I sift through my photos to think about time well spent. I am determined to take a few moments and jot some words with more frequency. I’ll start with yesterday….baby steps, right?

We went to Marc and Lara’s to celebrate Erin and her family moving back to town and Deneva’s annual summer visit. We were missing some key players, but it was fun to have our gang of girls back together for a few hours. I like how Thomas made it into our group shots, who knows where Maggie was! I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I’m so grateful for my group of girlfriends that I’ve known since I was a little girl. Aside from Jenni, whom I met in 7th grade, I know Lara, Deneva, Erin and Katrin from 1st or 3rd grade.

It was the first time in a long time that we’ve all been together and had a chance to talk and catch up. Lara and Marc’s house is set up so it was really enjoyable to be either inside our outside. Gavin, Erin’s son, showed Maggie the ways of the garden and she ended her day with dirt smashed in her hair and on her face. After Thomas went to bed, Maggie tried to call him on the baby monitor, but he was too busy snoring to respond.

On the drive home Barry and I decided that we’re more than grateful that we don’t have a lot of stairs to contend with at our house. I think I about had a heart attack a few times between Maggie, Gavin and Thomas going up and down the stairs on the deck. For the most part they are all pretty good, but every so often a little tumble happens. I think I might be mentally scarred from Maggie’s Webster School fall.

 I’m so excited that Erin and her family have moved back to Washington, especially now that we’ve both got kids that are the same age! I expect that we’ll have some adventures together this summer, and it could be argued that yesterday was just a preview of what’s to come!