Learning So Much!

The last few days we have seen many things just start to click. Since she was about 7months old, we have been signing "More" and "All done" at meal times, and looking for signs she understood it. As you know, if you've spent time with her, she completely bypassed learning the sign for "All Done" in favor of actually saying it: "Ah Dah! Ah Dah!" However, we've been getting a rather blank response for "more." Today, however, we saw a distinct understanding of the word, and a clear use of the sign. Yay! Maia has started to show more interest in using utensils to feed herself. At this time, it's me loading up the spoon or fork for her, and letting her take it from my hand. She generally gets it in right side up and without throwing it or dropping it. She is, of course, quite pleased with herself for this skill, and will throw her "So Big!" arms up and grin expectantly. We are also seeing more pointing with the intent of "tell me what this is." Lots of fingers in our eyes and noses. Sometimes she will point at our eyes ("That's mommy's eye! This is Maia's eye!") and sometimes she will point at hers. Mostly ours though. She is getting quite proficient at stairs. She wanted to be upstairs where I was, so Ray watched her go up the stairs. Once upstairs, she has NO interest in going down the stairs. In fact, every time we were downstairs, she decided she wanted to go up the stairs. Not just because she can, but so she could play with all the shoes in the mud room. That girl loves the shoes. Hers, mine, Ray's... it doesn't much matter. She LOVES to carry them around. I was very proud of her this evening. After her bath, I brought her downstairs to get her diaper on and some clean jammies. After she got her diaper on, she decided she'd had enough of the changing table, so I put her down and handed her the pjs and told her to bring them to daddy. She toddled out of the bathroom and walked straight to her music table, dropping her jammies behind her. So I went and sat on the couch while she played for a while. Then about a minute later, Maia walks up to Ray with her jammies in her hand and holds them out to him. So he stands her on the ottoman, and she sticks her leg straight out to the side and holds onto his arm to allow him to put the jammies on her feet! Man, she is always thinking! After a few cuddles with daddy, Maia and I went to her rocking chair in her room, where we read a book. She turns the pages (as she has for several months now) and will sometimes point at things (Bear! Duck!) and sometimes not. We finish the book and start to cuddle as is our routine. But she wiggles out after a moment. I let her go - generally this means she still has some energy to burn, so it's generally better for both of us to let her burn it. She slides down off my lap, and grabs another book off her rocking chair and brings it back to me. So we read the second book. Now she's ready to cuddle, and she's off to sleep. She has never brought me a book to read before! Also today I just caught sight of a new little gleam of white, signaling the arrival of the right lower lateral incisor. It's funny to me, because this is the first time the right side came in before the left, but I assume the left one will be coming along shortly... which will give her 8 teeth! Oh, my big girl!!