RUS 13 months

Dear RUS,

You have reached the age where every day--literally--every.single.day there is something new that we discover that you can do.

You've really picked up on the concept of signing as a way of communicating what you want. I mentioned in an earlier post all the signs you're doing on a regular basis, but even bigger than just the individual list of signs is the fact that you're actively trying to imitate and approximate the signs we do for you. At breakfast we sign "hot" when telling you that the oatmeal is too hot and we have to blow on it. You make the cutest--oh my goodness, it is SO CUTE--scrunched up little face with a blowing noise to imitate us blowing on your spoon, and you sign "hot"! I so want to get this on camera but it is all in the moment. It works when I'm holding the spoon and blowing and you're blowing, but if I tried to put the spoon down, grab the camera and say, "RUS, blow the spoon!" you'd be like, "What are you doing? What's going on?"

At school drop-off time your room is empty because all the babies get dropped off in one of the classrooms while the teachers wait for enough of their baby friends to trickle in before they break up into their individual classrooms. Sometimes this means you and I get a few minutes of bonding time as we play with the toys in the classroom just the two of us. Today you climbed onto the climber and started opening a bunch of books and pointing to the things in them. You love to look at books, you absolutely love it. You really enjoy turning the pages and pointing to whatever you see on the page. So we were sitting there and I was telling you what everything was that you were pointing to. Then I got up to sign your sign-in sheet and when I came back you were looking at shoes--and you were signing shoes-- I could not even believe it! I said, "YES! Shoes!!!" and you signed "shoes" again. Then you pointed at a picture of an apple and said "aah, ah, ah!" (which is what you say whenever you point at something) and then you pointed at the shoes again and signed "shoes." It was OBVIOUS you knew the sign for shoes and you were purposefully signing shoes because you were looking at the shoes.

You are also getting so much more interactive with your toys. You love to play with blocks--watching Daddy make creations with the Duplo blocks or knocking down every tower we try to make with our wooden blocks. You are able to put the Duplo blocks on top of one another in the appropriate direction although you're not always strong enough to make them click together. But it's impressive to me that you recognize which direction you need to turn the block in order to try to get them to nestle together!

On the eating front you are very good with a cup--you can even hold it and tip it yourself although after a few seconds of holding it you will invariably tip it a little too far onto yourself. You can hold your spoon yourself, scoop food onto it (or pick up food with the hand not holding the spoon and put it on the spoon) and bring the spoon to your mouth. Sometimes the food falls out, and you're still getting the hang of how you should hold the spoon, but--can I just say, WOW! We are very very impressed with all that you are doing!

You are a pretty good eater. But food that is very colorful you tend to avoid for some reason. We're sometimes sneaky and wrap things, like broccoli or shredded carrots, in a piece of penne pasta or a tortilla to get you to eat them. Sometimes you just throw the food off the tray. Fairly soon we're going to have to start the "as soon as you throw food you are done" rule.

We haven't settled on the perfect arrangement of chairs etc. around the table (our FisherPrice high chair is just so huge and bulky!) but right now you and R are sitting across from one another which I think is just perfect because the two of you laugh and copy one another throughout the whole meal. It's so great to see you light up at your sister's antics!!

Love,
Mama