"Sshhhhh!"

Lara is right now in an amazing period of language acquisition - almost two words a day, every day, are passing from her passive recognition language into active use. Watching her grow has always been a delight, but before this last month her development has been something a little bit "other" for me since the things she learned were only stepping stones towards learning the things she would use all her life. For instance, crawling was a thrilling (in both senses of the word!) milestone, but it didn't feel as though she were actually becoming one of us - you know, us humans - until now. Then she started mimicking our speech and our movements, and now... Now she is actually learning to play and pretend. Is it cliched to think one's child miraculous?

She is catching on to back-and-forth style games - giving chase, hide and seek - and is also starting to apply her knowledge of her own world to her toys. Her favorite mealtime game is to put her toy policeman to sleep. She puts him on his back, looks at me, and says, "sshhhhhh." Yesterday at dinner she picked up her spoon and fed her fireman doll, shoving avocadoes at his face, laughing, and then putting him down to sleep.

Also, perhaps not as significantly, we are experimenting with a new hairstyle. I'm loving it!