Letter to Lizzy- Seventeen Months

Dear Lizzy,

This past month, your language skills have just exploded. All of a sudden, you are saying tons of new words every day. In fact, it's quite common for you to wake up every morning and yell out every word you know rapid-fire style before we start the day. You're also starting to recognize books, and say the correct sounds for the first four or five pages of "Moo, Baa, La La La" and "If You See A Kitten". You still love to read. Yesterday, we went to the used book store--I planned to get you a couple of board books since you keep trying to rip the pages out of normal books when you're mad. However, you came across a picture dictionary, and LOVED it. You spent a good portion of the afternoon yesterday flipping through the pages and saying the words that you know.

You really love to listen to music, and have started to be able to communicate that you'd like to listen to a particular song. Some of your favorite songs right now are "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" (you like to sing along saying "Up-a-bof-HIGH!"), "I'm A Little Tea Pot", "The Wheels On the Bus", and "Pop Goes the Weasel".

One of your favorite words to say is "pizza", and I'm pretty sure it's also your favorite food at the moment, second maybe only to bananas. You love to dip your pizza in Ranch just like your dad.

My favorite thing that you say? 'Eye-oooh', which is your version of 'I love you.'

Along with your increase in verbal skills, your gross motor skills have also exploded in the past month...and you especially love to climb (see above picture--your first black eye happened yesterday due to a climbing incident). Twice last week, I bent down to get something out of the dishwasher and stood up to find you standing on our dining room table...which is kind of a scary thing for me baby girl! You haven't yet figured out how to climb out of your crib, but I'm sure that's coming soon.

You LOVE to slide. You know how to climb up the steps at the playground and could literally slide for hours on end. I can't wait until we can find or build you a little playground in our backyard!

All that said, you're also really starting to test limits. Last Saturday, your dad's band was playing music at a local lake. We all got free waterslide passes, and really wanted to take you because we knew you would love it. However, earlier in the day we had told you that you'd need to lay down and take a nap after lunch before we could go on the waterslides. You shook your head no, and literally held your eyes open for the entire day. Despite my best efforts, I could NOT get you to take a nap. It was totally clear that you understood what we said, but were testing limits. So, you didn't get to go on the waterslides--we were really sad about it, but we're trying to be good about sticking to what we tell you.

I have to admit though baby girl, you are just so sweet and cute that sometimes it's hard!

Love you forever,

Mom.