Our little girl is getting so big! I thought I'd share some of our favorite things...

Kate is very into walking up and down stairs (with assistance still, of course). Every step she takes she says, "step" in this adorable little voice, the end of the word higher than the beginning. I was showing her yesterday how to hold onto the rails next to the stair with one hand while holding my hand with the other - she loved that trick!

Utensils are a given at this point. Kate has become very proficient with spoons and forks, and she'll insist on a spoon if you don't immediately provide one, "spoo!" She's quite the master of navigating soup and cereal with milk, and I love watching her concentrate on what she's doing. There's still plenty of finger feeding, because really, what utensil do you use to eat frozen blueberries?

Speaking of eating, three molars are in, and the difference in her eating is amazing. It's clearly so much easier for her - the poor girl apparently has really been struggling to chew with her meager assortment of teeth! Molars make all the difference. The count at this point: 8 teeth. Two middle, top and bottom, three molars, and one to the right of her bottom center teeth. I think the ninth one will be to the right of her top teeth, and that fourth molar is due soon as well. Someday she'll have a full mouth of teeth, I swear she will...

Airplanes are her obsession. She has an incredible ability to pick up the sound of a plane in the sky no matter what the background sound is, and she generally hears them before I do. She'll squeal "ah-pay!" and point to the sky. We always look to see if we can find the plane in the sky, and if we do she'll wave bye. Most of the planes we see are leaving Dulles Airport, so I always say, bye, have a good trip! And she says, bye! while waving.

Every evening when we get home from work/daycare we go for a little walk in the neighborhood. Depending on her mood (I guess?) she'll either collect rocks or twigs along the way. There's a house around the corner that we always stop at; they have a walk leading to their front door, but there's an initial step right at the sidewalk. Kate loves to sit on it, and that's where she'll assess her collection (I never let her leave it behind, though).

Animals are still a big deal. We have a regular bunny visitor in the backyard, and seeing the bunny is a very exciting event. Butterflies are also a favorite and her enunciation has gotten dramatically better recently "bu-er-fy." Dogs are a perennial favorite unless we get close to one; then she's quite apprehensive. Dogs are good in theory but not in reality, apparently. She's become an expert meow-er, too. Even though "kitty" was her first word, we could never get her to meow. Well, those days are gone. She lays in her crib meowing, meows at the cats, meows at pictures of cats. The girl loves to meow, and she does it in the sweetest voice and with this little head tilt. Happily she's moved past animal sounds for the other major animals and now will say what they are; for example, if I point to a cow she'll say "cuh" instead of mooing; it always bugged me a little bit that she wouldn't even try to say the animal names. That said, I hope she never learns to say "elephant" because watching her make the sound makes me smile a huge smile everytime. She flings her arm up in the air with her hand bent at the wrist and blows raspberries. It's just about the funniest thing she does. You can imagine when she did it out of nowhere (another daycare trick) Jay and I just about lost it laughing. It's truly adorable.

Speaking of cats, I bought her some Hello Kitty band-aids recently, and she is in love with them. She had scraped her knee badly enough to need a band-aid a few weeks ago, and she screamed while I put on a "normal" band-aid. Even after the first experience and learning that band-aids don't cause pain, replacing that band-aid was no easier. I decided that perhaps having cute pink band-aids would be helpful, and man, was I right. Who knew that the appearance of a band-aid made such a difference? I always assumed the cute band-aids were to help distract a hurt child from their pain, not to actually get them to be willing to use one! She has a pink band-aid on her knee right now, and I'm sure she's going to talk about it all day at daycare tomorrow.

The girl is quite preoccupied with shoes. She's loved her shoes for months now (whatever pair might be in rotation), and now she's quick to point out anyone else's shoes - in person or just in pictures. At first she was pointing out the cow's shoes (hooves, of course), but when I told her they were feet she quickly adapted. Now we talk about the cow's and horse's feet before she'll go to bed. I bought her a pair of pink Crocs a couple of weeks ago and she is in heaven with them. She's nearly figured out how to put them on all by herself, too.

Kate's vocabulary has gotten so large that I'm not sure I could easily make a comprehensive list in one sitting. She's saying more and more two word phrases, but the most fun is that she'll try to repeat just about anything we say to her, particularly if we ask her to say it. There's still way more gibberish than actual words, of course, and from the sheer volume of gibberish that comes out of her mouth I think we have a serious chatterbox on our hands. A year from now I'm just going to be wishing for a moment's peace, I'm sure.

One of the more amazing things to Jay and me is the development of her memory. It's astonishing to hear her tell you what will come next in a song or on her favorite show (Jack's Big Music Show rocks! We have 15 episodes recorded). Her operational, for lack of a better term, memory has been clear for a long time (where her shoes are kept, where the snacks are, etc), but this more abstract memory is really cool to witness.

The daycare is helping to develop a very polite child. She says thank you all the time ("day do"), even sometimes while she's asking for something - as if by thanking us early we might be more motivated to do what she wants! *lol* It's astonishing how pervasive it is - she thanks us for just about everything, so we're encouraging it in those instances when she doesn't volunteer it. We, of course, ALWAYS say "you're welcome" in return, and we're working on "please" now.

As you can tell, we're totally in love with our little girl. Everyday we say, could she be any cuter?!? It doesn't hurt that she gives huge hugs and loves to cuddle, either.