A word a day

It's funny how different two little girls can be. For as slow as Alyssa was to talk, Lauren is picking up words pretty quickly. And for as soft spoken as Alyssa can be, Lauren can be quiet noisy. She surprises us by all the words that she has in her repertoire and how she says them at just the right moment sometimes. For example, a couple of weeks ago Aaron took the girls to the mall to the play area, and Lauren climbed up on one of the coin-operated rides, looked at Aaron, held her hand out and said "money". She may be little, but you can't get much by her.

Here are some of the words that she says:

Animals: Duck, neigh (for horse), moo (for cow), maa (for sheep and goats), ruff (for dogs), meow (for cats), cheep cheep or fly (for birds), butterfly, sssss (for snake), do do (for rooster, think cock-a-doodle-doo), hoo (for owl), snorting sound (for pigs), oo oo (for monkey), spider, neck (for giraffe), roar (for lion)

Body: eye, nose, mou(th), ear, hair, hand, toes, belly, cheek, neck

People: Ah (for Alyssa), Daddy, Grammy, Poppa, PapPap, Nana, Roo (for Drew), Weh (for Miss Gwen), baby, Ho ho ho (for Santa), Rudolph

Other words: mine, yeah, there, no, bottle, milk, french fry, Rudolph, book, bowl, night night, love you, car, purple, apple, cheese, bib, up, please, down, steps, c'mon, go, cup, beans, pee, poop, please, thank you, night night, hi, hello, bounce, jump, toast, jelly, (peanut) butter, zip, spoon, Elmo, cookie

Geesh, when you write them all down, it seems like a lot, huh? You totally need context though to know what she's saying.

She just recently added love you to her words and we love it! She's so sweet at night time when you say "Love you Lauren" and she responds "o you".

I've included some videos so you can begin to hear her little voice. All of them were taken while reading books. Because of the limitations of video size, I had to break them up into smaller chunks, but they're kind of fun. The ones with animal sounds are from "The Very Busy Spider", an Eric Carle book, and the body video is from "My Nose, My Toes and Me".










One of my favorite times of day is taking the girls to day care in the morning and singing songs. We take turns on who gets to pick the first song, but invariably if Lauren picks the first song it's "Ho" (Heigh ho, heigh ho, it's off to day care we go!), she'll sign all the "ho"s. She'll join in on Alyssa's selection as well though, singing "day" at the appropriate time in "This is the Day". I love to have my girls singing and laughing together, there's little that brings me more joy than just watching them have fun together.

I'm reminded of the two of them laughing the other night at dinner, when Lauren had her finger up her nose (again!). Alyssa said to her "Lauren, stop picking your nose. That's gross!" To which Lauren turned to her, smiled, and pushed that finger up there even higher, which brought more "no's" from Alyssa and more laughter from Lauren. I couldn't help but laugh myself.

She continues to be quite the character, just a happy-go-lucky little girl with a mind of her own and a stubborn streak. If what you want is not what she wants, watch out. She continues to make the silliest faces as you can see in some of the photos that follow.





She might have finally hit a growth spurt; in fact, Aaron thinks she's grown 2 inches since Christmas. This is good seeing as the at the past two doctor's visits they've had to stretch her to get her "on the chart" for height. And even her hair is growing little by little. There's just enough for two pigtails, not necessarily your traditional pigtails, but cute for around the house nonetheless.



Our "little Lauren" really is quite a cutie and quite a character. Words, photos and videos just don't quite do her justice. Despite those trying moments, I wouldn't trade her personality for the world. Just watch out world because she's coming at ya-