Praying, Talking, Reading

A narrative update, for a change, about our little Lucy. For awhile now we've prayed with Lucy before she goes to sleep, thanking God for things from the day and for our extended family and friends. Recently she started chiming in with her own suggestions for what she's thankful for. Mama, Papa, Jamie (our babysitter) and her baby doll and blankey get frequent mentions; also in there have been Mimi and Papa Jack, Grandma Judy, Auntie Caitlin and Sam. And then there are the more unique entries: books (she actually mentions these pretty often), chair, sound machine, moon. It's fun for me to remember that we can also be thankful for these small, inanimate things.

Lucy's language continues to develop and she's become quite talkative. She says "hold you" when she wants to be held, which is super cute. She's also saying 2-3 word sentences, like "Papa choo-choo go, big choo-choo", "shoes on, coat on, bye-bye", "mama do that", "Lucy hold that" and so on.

In October we got some refrigerator alphabet letters, and Lucy very quickly learned to identify M for Mama, P for Papa, and L for Lucy. J for Jamie soon followed, and since then she's learned to identify about 3/4 of the alphabet, as we've matched each letter with a word that it starts with. So she'll pick up a book now and will say "Papa, hair, ear, ear, toy, water, baby" (for the letters p, h, e, t, w, b). She loves "pretend" reading as well, where she'll pick up a book or magazine and "read" it aloud, with all the intonations and rhythms of speaking.

Lucy continues to be very cheerful, full of smiles and game-playing. She loves being chased around the house by us holding one of her stuffed animals, or playing hide and seek. She also enjoys coloring with markers or pens, reading books, and building towers with blocks or legos. When she colors, Lucy will often make long lines and say that she's making letters, like P or L or M. And if we give her something with writing on it, she'll carefully make marks on the letters- she seems very ready to write!

Finally, we're thrilled that Lucy is taking more interest in going potty. Over the last week she's gone potty pretty regularly before bath-time, and yesterday she went 3-4 times in the afternoon in the potty, hardly going in her diaper at all. In fact, the only way I could get her to stop sitting on the potty was to tell her we could try again in a half-hour. It'll probably be awhile still, but it's nice that she is genuinely excited about it.