September 10

Lily practiced some walking today, and though she didn't do much, she is already noticeably better than the other day when she took her first steps. Of course, the moment I got out the camera to take a video of her walking, she quit. She has recently become fascinated with the camera, wanting to see the pictures I take and take pictures herself. Now every time I get the camera out, she stops what she's doing and tries to play with the camera.

So it goes.

I only ended up with one picture of Lily reading a book:

The girl is totally into books right now, especially ones with pictures of babies or cats. She doesn't have the patience or self-control to sit through a book with the big kids, but she loves reading her little books!

I've been thinking about Lily's language development lately. She seems to be on a very normal/high-normal track, and has picked up several new words in the past week or so. Still, it's nothing compared to Caleb at this age. However, Lily has been getting really frustrated with her inability to communicate lately, and has been doing a lot of screaming. 

If she wants something? She screams.

If she's down from her chair? She screams.

If I gave her the wrong thing? She screams.

I totally understand that she's screaming out of frustration because she can't express what she wants, but still. I am tired of being screamed at! She knows several signs, but refuses to use them. Instead, she prefers to grunt and scream. It's really unpleasant.

But, for posterity's sake, here's a list of Lily's words at just over a week shy of 14 months old:

cat

dog

dad

bye-bye

hi

eye

up

uh-oh

tickle

pat

duck

quack

woof

more (very occasionally)

Caleb (she calls him "Bub")

Do you notice anything conspicuously absent? Like, perhaps "Mom"? 

Girl doesn't say it.

I thought I heard it a few times, but it turned out she was saying "more".  *sigh* Some day. 

In the meantime, I'm actually pretty pleased with this list. I'm sure I'm missing a few of her words, but this list has 15, and the expectation for a normal 14-month-old is 3-5 words. They say at this age, a baby's words are normally "Mom", "Dad", and something simple like "ball". So Lily may not say "Mom", but she does say "tickle". She's clearly a prodigy, right?