monkey chatter: 16 months

What, another month has passed already? I guess so.

Little girl is 1 and a 1/3 years old now! Our server at Cracker Barrel yesterday apparently thought she looked much younger--he said "I have a 16 month old and I remember when she was that [Annie's] size!" According to Doug, it's just because Annie has tiny parents.

Here she is rocking the chairs at the Cracker Barrel. If you've seen my dad's video, this is a different angle, but the same time. :) She's such a little starlet. This was while we were waiting for AAA... you can see by her curls just how sweaty we all were.

Anyway, in the last two and a half weeks, she has learned so much! She started shrugging her shoulders, mostly when she's excited. She has been working very hard on her articulation of certain words and sounds, and trying to clearly copy things that we say (guess it's time to start with the earmuffs). Instead of da-doh, she works to say doG. That's a hard G... comes out a bit like doCK. :) She imitates kick, kick, kick and vroom, vroom... The car noise is the one thing I've found that she will reliably remove her pacifier to do, well, other than milk.

Anything that she doesn't think she can do she has to listen very closely to and then giggle. She makes this funny little laugh now. I think it is when she thinks something should be funny and she's just trying to humor us. She still reserves her belly laugh for tickling.

No new teeth since the last post, but I'm sure there's another one coming soon because she's been drooling like crazy.

She's gotten a lot better with her utensil use. I've decided I like her to use forks--there's less chance that yogurt or applesauce will be flung around as she brings the fork out of the container because there's less on it :) But even with spoons there has been noticeable improvement. Sometimes even with two spoons, she still likes to use her fingers.

I have been lucky enough to have some time off after my boards, so Annie and I went home to Clearwater for a week. She went in the pool for the first, second, and third times, and we went down to the beach one day, too. She really enjoyed the water. Most of the pool time she spent in a little raft, but we had her out and she was kicking a bit by the last time. At the beach she liked playing with the sand and fun toys that Grandma Gigi had. She wasn't quite as sure about the waves when we went in the water there.

She still LOVES the dogs... pretty much any that she sees. She had a great time bonding with Xena while we were at my parents' house, and now she has started climbing up onto Sadie's couch at home to sit with her. She has gotten much better about being gentle when she pets them, so Sadie will stick around a little longer now. Of course, it helps that she is a fairly constant source of snacks.

While we were at home, we also went to the wedding of Kevin and Michelle McKinley. Kevin used to live next door to us on Eden Court. Annie was the youngest one at the wedding, but she seemed to have a good time. One of the flower girls was just a couple months older than her. It was a beautiful ceremony and reception in St. Pete. We got to spend some time with the Blakeslees and catch up with old friends.

Last Friday I had my residency graduation dinner. We got all dressed up and wined and dined with some good friends from the last 4-9 years. Wow. Many of them are moving away for fellowship, so by the end of the evening I was sad, but here are some happier shots from early on!