Because we focused our extremely long last blog post on our adventure to Washington, we neglected to mention all of Scarlett's new behavioral patterns. First, she is making it clear that she understands more than we expect her to. She has been pointing at things as we name them for months, but she now is starting to speak her mind very clearly. The big thing right now is "no". If you ask her a question ("Scarlett, do you want some carrots?") she starts shaking her head "no." Then, if we say "no" to her, she starts shaking her head as well. Picture this: Scarlett starts racing for the stairs. As she puts her hand on the next step to start her climb, we start saying "no" -- she then, in response, stops in her tracks and starts shaking her head back and forth. The funniest thing is that then every time she starts to put her hand on the stairs, it is accompanied by the head shaking. Sigh. We have a rough road ahead.
Her stubbornness has been exhibited in others ways lately too. She has had some parental separation anxiety for months, but lately her mommy attachment is over the top. She is fine with Paul if I'm not around, but if we are both there and he takes her, she will scream bloody murder (the no breathing cry) and flail trying to get back to me and latch on. Although it does pull on my heart strings, it isn't the most convenient habit!
She is REALLY into music. We blogged a couple of months ago about her dancing, but she also claps in time with the music. It is pretty adorable. We're going to have to get her into some music classes soon! She burns out the batteries in her keyboard every other day... Literally!
Speaking of "music," Scarlett has picked up a musical habit of her own -- she screeches like a banshee. She did that quite a bit on the flight to Seattle in fact. She has a variety of screeches. Screech for when she is happy/excited, screech for when she is mad, screech for when she doesn't want to go to sleep... It's great. Really. We are very proud...
Another fun trick this week is that she likes to play peek-a-boo. Well, she has always enjoyed us playing peek-a-boo with her, but now she plays all by herself. She ducks down behind her crib or playpen and then hops up with a loud sound. If you add "Where's Scarlett?" and "There she is!" or "Peek-a-boo" she squeals with laughter.
For smaller tricks, she still claps, sporadically does "touch down", gives high fives, gives kisses (WIDE open mouth), and says a variety of words like "doggies" when she sees Blake and Axel, "kitty" or "ba ba" when she sees Bacchus, and "bye bye", "yeah", and periodically mimics other words and phrases that we say (e.g., "teddy bear"). Today it sounded like she was mimicking a neighborhood dog when it was barking while we were on a walk. It's a lot of fun to just listen to her these days because you never know what she might say!
That's so fun to when they start talking. I think you have a little baby genius on your hands.
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