Of course she's brilliant

Here are some fun things Emmy is up to these days...

1. She says "Daddy/Dada", "Rags/Ragsie", "hey", "Big DaDa", "doggie" (or Lucy, we're not quite sure which since she was referring to Lucy-dog) and finally "MAMA" very clearly. Plus, several other things that we can't quite distinguish but often sound a lot like Daddy and Ragsie. Obviously, Emmy loves Rags!

2. She can tell you what a whale, a dog, a cow, a monkey and a lion say. For the record, she has lots of bath toys, to include whales, so I told her that whale says "Pffff" (like when he blows water out of his blow hole." Much to my surprise, she started blowing raspberries back to me and when you ask her what a whale says, she will blow you a raspberry. Well, most of the time. Charles just taught her how to roar like a lion, and it is probably the cutest. All the others she manages to do with her mouth closed, but her roar involves her moving her mouth, and then grinning at you. I love it!

3. She likes to feed herself with the spoon/fork. She's been reaching for the spoon and helping us feed her yogurt, oatmeal, etc. for a while, but when she grabs it and we let go, she likes to sling it about. Of course this means oatmeal winds up on the floor, high chair, or one of us. She's starting to do a better job of just putting the spoon in her mouth, and now she's using the fork, too and there's a lot less food flying with the fork. She cannot put the food on the fork or spoon herself yet, but that's okay. It's very cute to see her using her fork, and sometimes when she is in mood and won't eat, the fork is the best way to get a little more food in her!

4. Speaking of food, she is still quite the good eater. She likes lots of vegetables and fruits, though peaches, watermelon, bananas, figs, applesauce, carrots, pickles, and squash (particularly Su-Su's squash casserole) are some of her favorites. She has quite a fondness for spaghetti, chicken salad (one of the few meats she really likes eating), black beans, and shrimp. Oh, and peanut butter. Man, this kid loves peanut butter! Here she is two fisting a PB&J.

5. No more bottles or formula! I mentioned that she stopped using bottles a couple of weeks ago. We found a sippy she'd finally drink more than a few sips from, and so after a couple of days we just stopped giving her bottles and she's never looked back! Yay! It's nice not to have to put all the parts together. We also finished our last can of formula on Sunday. Dr. J. wanted her to stay on formula until she was at least 14 months for the extra calories. Hopefully, we're safe in stopping now, so it feels like we got a raise! It's nice not to have to worry about mixing anything any more, too. I really hope that with a future baby I will have better success nursing exclusively. Formula is really expensive! Here are Emmy and Will taking a sippy cup break.

6. We have been doing the Kindermusik Sign and Sing class this summer, so we've all been learning some sign language. We had been doing a few signs with her before we signed up for the class, like for Mama, Daddy, milk, bath, and a couple of others. I think she recognized them, but milk was the only one she'd done back to us. Since we started class, she has learned a couple more. She will occasionally sign "more", "all done", "night-night" and "eat/food", but her favorites are "fan" and "light". She is always looking up at the ceiling and signing one or the other. If you ask her where the fan is, she will point and do the sign, and you ask her here the light is, and she will sign light. She's so smart. :) Supposedly teaching young children sign language helps with their language development and they tend to talk sooner. I don't know if it's true, but it sure is fun to watch! Here she is signing "fan".

7. She is still a dancin' fool! She's added this little shoulder shimmy occasionally which if you can catch it is hysterical. She dances in her car seat. She dances while she's playing. The other day we were trying to get her to walk to us from the den to her room. "Stayin' Alive" was on the radio and she was holding onto the wall, walking to us, and every few steps she'd stop and bounce and dance. So funny! She'll also push buttons on her musical toys, clap as the music starts, then dance.

8. We call her the DESTROYER. Man, she can destroy a room in no time flat! Fortunately, she is also interested in putting things in buckets/containers, so occasionally she will put blocks back in buckets. She has gotten quite good at stacking her rings, too, so maybe one day she'll work toward helping clean up more than destroy. If only we can get her to stop pulling my cookbooks off the bookshelf...

That's all the really interesting (okay, interesting to some people, maybe) things I can think of right now, but I'm sure there will be more to come!

Some photos are courtesy Su-Su (from Emmy's Greenville trip) and some came from Aunt Lisa (from the 4th of July). Thanks, y'all! I've not been as good about taking photos lately.