Cecilia Update

I was talking to a friend at church on Sunday and she was trying to get her daughter to say "bear." But she wasn't in the mood. Well her daughter is about the same age as Cecilia, so it made me stop and think. Wait a minute, Cecilia can say a few words and I didn't even notice! She definitely says my name. The other day Shaun got her up in the morning and was changing her diaper. She was doing her normal baby chatter, until I walked by the door. Then she goes "MA!" Sometimes it is "EHH-MA!" and yesterday she even said "MOM." Sure melts your heart when you hear your one year old call for you by name. This week I realized she also says "Ball" (Bah), "Balloon" (Boo), and "Apple" (Ahpahpah). Apple is my favorite because she pulls this really funny face to say it that you can only do when you don't have any teeth. I want to get a video of it, but she won't do it on demand. Today we went to the store. You don't realize how many balloons there are at the grocery store until you go with a baby who can only say a few words and balloon happens to be one of them. I had to ask the checkout lady if they had any free balloons so I could give her one. I took a video of her when we got home but she only said balloon once (which is really more like a drawn out boo with the intonations of balloon) and if you aren't paying attention you may miss it. I can't wait to see what word she picks up next.



Oh and in the video you can also see how she walks with her behind. This is how she "crawls", although it can't really be called that when she is sitting down. She pulls with her arms, wiggles her legs and feet, and scoots with her butt. It is funny to watch. The first time Shaun saw it he quoted Bill Cosby "As I was sitting in the dentist chair I realized that if I ever went paralyzed from the knee down I could walk with my behind." I keep trying to put her back on her tummy so she will learn how to crawl for real, but since she learned this she won't let me do it. She is quickly learning how to get around and I have to watch her more closely. Funny how I've been looking forward to this day for so long and yet I still don't feel prepared for it.

She also finally learned to roll over onto her tummy. It is a byproduct of learning how to pull herself up to a sitting position. Shaun taught her how to do this and it makes changing her diaper much more difficult. She has some abs of steel this one. Here is a video of it.



So she learned to roll over onto her tummy by trying to sit up, not being able to quite make it and tipping over instead. I didn't really count that, but this week she did finally did it on purpose, she is only 13 months old! But she has a great excuse and we'll leave it at that. All in all she has made great progress, especially in the last week.