Harvest Fest and Hope at 16 months...

Hope is 16 months-she'll be 17 months on the 18th. We just can't believe how time is flying! Hope is of course walking now and running all over the place. She won't stop long enough to even get a decent picture as you'll see below. Hope is doing all sorts of new things. She knows so many signs including: more, all done, milk, eat, wait, please and thank you. She made up her own sign for night-night. It's so cute. She tucks her fist up under her chin and says, "nigh-nigh," like she's cuddling her blanky. We are working on other signs now, such as, water, yes, no and we will soon start working on some signs for "potty." I just figured, she picked up so well on the ones we've taught her, why stop here? I am a huge proponent of baby signing b/c it acutally teaches them to communicate with you instead of screaming, which is what Hope did for the first 6 months of her life. It also engages their brain in a totally different way and teaches them to make connections they would not have made otherwise. It's also been really neat b/c she will sign a word and say it at the same time, so it's not like it's hindering her verbal communication at all, and really it seems to be only helping it.

Hope knows lots of animals and animal sounds. If she sees an animal that she doesn't know, she will just make up a sound for it. It's so cute. She loves dogs the most, though, and whenever she sees one, she yells, "PUPPY!! WOOF WOOF!" She also loves cats and constantly follows Hobbes around the house "meowing," trying to get him to play with his string. He takes it all in stride of course, and is much more patient with her than he would be with Stephen or myself. She absolutely LOVES any animal of any kind really. She is always singing "Old MacDonald," not the whole song, of course, but the E-I-E-I-O part and shouts the animal sounds, and is usually on key with us! *blink blink* Crazy!

Hope also knows almost all of her body parts and loves to point them out on herself and on us. She is also loving books of any kind right now. All day long our day looks like this: Hope brings me a book and climbs up on the couch for me to read it to her. (Or if I'm sitting on the floor she will climb in my lap.) When we are finished reading, she climbs down and goes and gets another book, yelling, "BOOK!" the whole time, climbs back up and insists that I read the next one. She's obsessed. It's funny because she is also weirdly fascinated with her daddy's music books and is constantly wanting me to read them to her. I have to explain that she would not be interested in those and that she should bring me one of HER books. She does not like this and usually throws a fit. So I oblige and turn pages for her until she gets bored and sees that I really do know what I am talking about and goes and gets one of her own books. We do this SEVERAL times a day. It's quite hilarious, actually.

Hope is also into her Baby Einstein DVD's. She really loves them. We watch about one per day, so it's not too much-just enough to keep her interested. She's also starting to do puzzles. We have one with shapes and she can actually match the shape and fit the pieces in. It's amazing! She HATES to color or do any organized craft of any kind. I fear she is taking after her mother in this aspect. But I'm not going to force her. We have plenty of time for all that "artsy fartsy" stuff. She can eat with a fork and spoon now, although she's still pretty messy. We're slowly getting better in this area.

I guess that's it. Sorry that was so long, but I hadn't written an update on Hope in awhile, so I thought y'all might like to know what's going on. Below are some Harvest Fest pics, and, as usual, they are not great. Hope dressed as a ladybug. Hope y'all enjoy!

This little boy was a cow. They were fascinated with each other!

And back at home throwing a fit b/c she had to come home (don't even ask why the pic is green, I have NO clue!)