The one with that thing I wasn't going to do

The first year just flies by.  And they change sooooo much in that time, every month was something new and different, so I felt no shame in reserving a special post for each of Leah's first 12 months, complete with bear picture for the sake of comparison.

When we hit the one year mark, I couldn't see continuing to write about each new development on a month-by-month basis.  I mean, really.  Enough seemed like enough.

So I resolved to cut back to only once every three months.

But I'm tellin' ya, the last two months?  They've been crazy in terms of Leah's development!  Clearly, I have no choice but to put them all down for the official record book. 

• Her vocabulary has literally doubled.  I'm pretty sure it's actually trippled.  I would bet my right hand - or at least one or two of the fingers - that she now speaks somewhere around 150 words.
• She recognizes a vast majority of the animals at the zoo and all the farm animals.  Some are a little tricky - like Zebra, which she calls a horse,  but I figure that's close enough.
• She knows the following animals and their sounds: dog (arf), kitty (meow), peacock (waaaaaah...okay, so that one is tough to type), cow (moo), monkey (ooh-ooh-aaah-aaah), bird (tweet).
• We learned the colors green, red and pink, and for about a week that was going swimmingly.  Then we learned yellow, and now everything is yellow.  And also sometimes that's how she feels.  As in, Leah, how do you feel today?  Leah: Yellow!
• She adores Elmo, and if I sing the theme to Elmo's world, she starts to dance and yells, NELMO!  She also knows Cookie Monster and Abby.
• It is somuchfun to read books with her, because she stops and points out everything that she knows.  It's kinda hard to get a word in edgewise.  Really, she reads the books to me.  She also asks for books by name.  So cute! 
• She recognizes the letters M, T, A and E.  That's right.  When they're written on paper.  I'm pretty sure Sesame Street taught her the letter M, which is totally okay with me!
• Says please and thank you, but usually not without some prompting.
• Loves to go over and over the names of people in our family. 
• She discovered that if she says hurt or ow, we will stop and respond.  Although she's not really clear yet on the concept of what hurts.  Mom: What hurts, honey?  Leah: Nelmo.  Mom: Elmo hurts?   Leah: Yeah.
• Learned what we do when we see a snake: we scream!  Although it toally makes me laugh, I sometimes regret teaching her this one.  Mostly when we go out to eat or are in the grocery store and my child is screaming. 
• She loves to dress up, and is totally in to hats and shoes.
• Loves to give hugs and kisses.  She is so sweet about it, and requests to kiss everything from toys, to people, to animals at the zoo and even her food.  We hear, grape... kiss! all the time.  Seriously.
• She is still not particularly outgoing when we're around people, but talks about them all day after visits.

I can't believe how quickly our baby is turning into a real, bonafide child. 

Seventeen months.  How lucky we are!