So Much Fun

I cannot imagine alone time ever being more fun than AB time.

It does not take much for her to laugh. In fact she usually initiates the laughing because she loves to be chased. She starts the game by walking (supposed to be running) away from us, while looking back at us with that gleam in her eye saying, "please come and get me!" How could we resist? Of course we take off after her, throwing her up in the air as we catch her (usually eliciting a squeal), roll with her on the ground, and the set her on her way. This repeats itself about 10-15 times a day.

The other times she laughs is when we laugh. KB and I may laugh about something said between the two of us, and we will hear AB join us. Then we laugh because she is laughing, and that just keeps the whole thing going for a while.

Her new favorite book is the sing-along book, "The Wheels on the Bus." She brings this book to us about 20 times a day. I think it is her favorite because there are motions involved in this song. Her favorite part is when the people on the bus bounce up and down because she too gets to bounce up and down. The other books she just drops in our lap and walks off. She does not care to sit and look at them; she just wants to hear them. "Five Green and Speckled Frogs" is her favorite book to just listen to.

Her other favorite thing about books are that they apparently taste good. She has ruined the spine of half of her books. Now all of her books have been taped at the spine as either a precaution or to repair them. Her little "lift the flap books" have been hidden away for now since she began to tear off the flaps off. So, yeah she is a little destructive.

She is already a little mommy. Her favorite dolls are her Minnie Mouse, Dumbo, frog, baby doll, and her two Carter's baby dolls. If she is not holding one of them, then she insists that we hold them for her. She will not settle for her dolls to lay on the ground - they deserve better.

AB loves to jabber. The words that we can distinguish are daddy (said the most often), bye-bye, banana, Ahh-Da! (which is somehow supposed to be Toby), and very rarely she says mommy.

Bath time is one of her favorite times of the day. We only have a baby bathtub, so until we can move into an apartment that has a full size bathtub we hope she will continue to fit in the baby tub. She discovered splashing about a month ago, and it just will not stop. I have to bathe her with a towel draped over my clothes. She has gotten so wound up while splashing that she has tipped over backwards twice. Both times her face went under the water for half a second before I was able to pull her up, but it did nothing to hurt her love of baths. As soon as she coughs up any water she inhaled, she wants right back in the water. I MUST find an indoor swimming pool when we are in the US this time next year. I think she will have a blast swimming.

AB likes to open the clean laundry basket (clean laundry waiting till I have time to fold them) and try on the clothes. Her favorite piece of clothes - mommy's panties. She wears them around her neck. It is a great party trick. We are hoping that she will begin to do it on command when people come over - kidding obviously.

She also likes to get in baskets. She will empty out a basket just so she can sit in it for quite a long time. I do not get it, but she thinks it is great.

One of her newest loves is shoes. It does not matter what shoes, but she prefers her shoes and my shoes. I think daddy's shoes are in boring colors are too big for her to carry. She likes to match the shoes and carry them around as a pair. She will dig through her shoe drawer until she finds matching shoes, and sometimes brings them to me to put them on her.

The other day we also noticed her spinning a around a couple of times. Right now she has to think about it too much for it to be fun, but this could be the beginning of her new favorite trick.

She is ticklish on the bottom of her feet. Trimming her toe nails is always a feat because somehow I manage to tickle her and she just can't stay still.

She loves a good massage. We learned early on that AB will lay still for a back rub. For some reason this amuses me to no end. Sometimes I will rub her head, back, arms, legs and feet just to see her relaxed expression. Both KB and I love a good massage, so I guess she was bound to love them as well.

As my mother said when AB was just one day old, "AB got a double dose of stubborn." We do not know, she could be taking after her dad or her mom; we are both pretty stubborn. Her stubbornness is most evident at meal time. It is easier for me to list the foods she does like because that list is much shorter than the foods she does not like. On most days AB likes to eat eggs, cheese, tortillas, bread, mac and cheese, bananas, oatmeal with pumpkin, oatmeal with sweet potato, pancakes, and apple sauce. She also likes pizza, and strawberries, but unfortunately she gets the nastiest rash ever if she eats tomatoes or a ton of strawberries like she did a couple of days ago - we are still paying for that one. She has a definite sweet-tooth; she has yet to taste a desert that she does not like. Also, thankfully, she loves milk.

When I was young I hated people telling me that I was stubborn. I do not know if it helped solidify my stubbornness or what, but I am going to try to never tell AB she is stubborn, maybe then she will not know to be stubborn. You think?

AB keeps us laughing all day long. I never thought a baby could be so entertaining, but our baby is very entertaining to us. She is a million times better than TV or even reading the Twilight series. I just cannot wait to hear what she has to say one day.