Little Miss Chatterbox

This is my Little Miss Baby Boo:

She is almost 11 months now and I am loving discovering the many facets of her personality.

Believe me, there are many sides to her.

As of late, she has been:

It's true!

She has been quite the talker since she was a newborn with all her cute coos.

She graduated to cannonic syllables pretty early on. Her favorites so far have been Gak and Bop!

My favorite sound was always her adorable gurgles. She still does them on occasion when she is being goofy.

Around 8 months of age, she mastered dada followed by mama. She was using them in the proper context from the get go.

At 9 months she figured out up and baba. Up she says a lot because she likes to be picked up all the time - she is a needy little momma's girl. Baba means bottle or boob. Let me tell ya, girlfriend can eat!

I believe it was month 10 that brought hat, which actually means cat. No surprise there since she LOVES the cats. 

In the last couple of weeks, she is having a language explosion of sorts; relative to her previously limited vocabulary at least.

Now we have:

• buh - translation: brother
• ah dun - translation: all done
• ball - she gets that one right
• uh oh - she only says the uh part half the time
• bye bye - used in conjunction with a very hearty wave
• She may be saying dog correctly, but I haven't heard her say it more than twice so it may be a fluke.

I don't know when she will slow down again, if ever. She has been mimicking words like crazy too. I only count them when she actually uses them properly though. It is so fun watching her learn language. It is fun watching both kids do it, and seeing the huge developmental differences that 17 months makes. I have been making lots of use of the techniques I discussed a couple of months ago including "parentese". It is all very effective for Baby Boo and is the reason she knows several of the words that she does. Having a big brother that is still learning language himself has also been super helpful for her development. She is always very determined to try to keep up with him.

Ball

Here are 2 more fitting labels for my girl:

Yes she really seems to enjoy getting into mischief. She especially loves to terrorize her sweet, often (though not always) patient, brother. He builds a Lego tower, she knocks it down. He spends 15 minutes meticulously setting up his train track system, she comes and bulldozes over it all. She gets a gleam in her eye when she sees something she wants to take or destroy:

This girl holds no prisoners!

Here is an example of the trouble/naughtiness taken out on a different family member:

Here, both kids were sitting around playing with Mega Blocks:

Baby Boo gets sick of sharing so she scoots everything over to her side leaving her brother with just the ones he was holding:

She squealed loudly at him and swatted at him when he tried to take some back.

Little Dude puts up with it with much more grace than I think I could. She does get separated from the situation once she gets too bothersome or abusive. I also like to let them sorts things out on their own though, so that in the future it isn't always a 'tell mom' situation.

Lately it has actually been working too. Little Dude has gotten really good about sharing with his sister, and she plays with him almost as much as she tries to take or destroy his stuff. It is really sweet when I catch them playing and laughing together. They like to play a game together that is somewhere between peekaboo and hide-n-seek. I can always tell when they do because Baby Boo lets out the biggest belly laughs:

 

Despite her naughty side, she is a sweet girl that is getting sweeter every day. To me she will always be:

. . . and nothing less!

Before I sign off, I wanted to throw a shout out to my amazing little boy. He is a big part of who Baby Boo is, and I am frequently finding myself amazed at his awesome big brother skills.

If I had to choose a Mr. Men character for him it would be:

. . . because my little dude loves to make people laugh, and enjoy the fun side of life: