Funny face

Earlier in the week I mentioned how Hallie plays Hide-n-Seek. A funny development-- lately whenever Hallie feels like she can't crawl fast enough she rolls over and plays dead. I kid you not we have an opossum on our hands. Which reminds me of how much of an animal she has been today-- she didn't even take a nap! No, not one. She talked to herself in her crib for at least an hour everytime we put her down. When Chris and I finally put her to bed for the night she proceeded to scream. Poor thing. There are apparently not enough hours to play in the day.

Hallie sucked from a straw for the first time today. It happened by accident. She tried to blow bubbles with a straw and when water came back up she decided to keep sucking. We were proud parents. Also at dinner, I blew on her refried beans that were hot. She thought it was a funny custom and insisted on blowing on each bite herself even long after the plate cooled to room temperature. She tries to talk to us all the time now and we have no idea what she is saying.

Hallie's favorite song as of late is "The Wheels on the Bus." Her absolute favorite verse is "The mommies on the bus go shh-shh-shh." She will even initiate the song by sticking her finger next to her mouth and bouncing up and down while she says "shh-shh-shh. shh-shhh-shhh. shh-shh-shhh." Then while I go through all the verses she tries to sing "shh" at all the wrong places. She is so excited when we reach the right verse. But most times she doesn't "shh" along by that point. She just smiles and listens in amazement.

Reading is an adventure now-- literally. When she was younger I could read her anything because she wasn't fully cognizant. Well, now her toddler attention span is in full force. If a book has more than two sentences per page she is trying to dive off my lap. It was nice when we read Goodnight Gorilla last night because there are only about ten sentences the entire book, i.e. "Goodnight gorilla," and "Goodnight giraffe." The rest was colorful pictures.

Chris and I laugh with her more than ever recently. She does so many cute faces. A new favorite is her duck face. This is where she purses her lips and scrunches her eyebrows. We crack up every time. This makes her perform for us again and again.





By the way, you'll notice Hallie has a new booster seat. She kept doing suicide dives off of her gorgeous wood high chair so we had to get something with a seatbelt before she cracked her head.